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2013 4:45PM

Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation

What role do playful behaviour and playful thought take in animal and
human development? How does play relate to creativity and, in turn, to
innovation?
Unravelling the different meanings of play, this book focuses on
non-aggressive playful play. The authors emphasise its significance for
development and evolution, before examining the importance of
playfulness in creativity. This discussion sheds new light on the links
between creativity and innovation, distinguishing between the
generation of novel behaviour and ideas on the one hand, and the
implementation of these novelties on the other. The authors then turn
to the role of play in the development of the child and to parallels
between play, humour and dreaming, along with the altered states of
consciousness generated by some psychoactive drugs. A final chapter
looks ahead to future research and to what remains to be discovered in
this fascinating and important field.

PATRICK BATESON FRS is Emeritus Professor of Ethology at the

University of Cambridge. He is President of the Zoological Society of
London and a former Vice-President of the Royal Society. Much of his
scientific career has been concerned with the development of
behaviour. He is also co-author of Plasticity, Robustness, Development and
Evolution (Cambridge, 2011).

PAUL MARTIN studied behavioural biology at the University of

Cambridge before becoming a Harkness Fellow in the Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He has
lectured and researched in behavioural biology at the University of
Cambridge and is a former Fellow of Wolfson College.

The authors have published other successful books together, including

Measuring Behaviour: An Introductory Guide (3rd edition, Cambridge, 2007).
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C:/ITOOLS/WMS/CUP-NEW/3939916/WORKINGFOLDER/BATE/9781107015135TTL.3D iii [3–3] 18.3.2013 4:49PM

Play, Playfulness,
Creativity and
Innovation

patrick bateson
and
paul martin
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cambridge university press

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, Sªo Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press,

New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107015135

© P. Bateson and P. Martin 2013

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2013

Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Bateson, P. P. G. (Paul Patrick Gordon), 1938
Play, playfulness, creativity and innovation / Patrick Bateson,
University of Cambridge and Paul Martin, Wolfson College, Cambridge.
pages cm.
ISBN 978-1-107-01513-5 (hardback)
1. Play  Psychological aspects. 2. Creative ability. 3. Creative
thinking. I. Martin, Paul R., 1951 II. Title.
BF717.B28 2013
155dc23
2013001078

ISBN 978-1-107-01513-5 Hardback

ISBN 978-1-107-68934-3 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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Contents

Preface page vii

Acknowledgements ix

1. Introduction 1
2. The biology of play 10
3. The functions of play 28
4. Evolution and play 42
5. Creativity in humans 55
6. Animals finding novel solutions 69
7. People and organisations 77
8. Childhood play and creativity 89
9. Humour and playfulness 103
10. Dreams, drugs and creativity 110
11. Pulling the threads together 122

Notes 130
References 135
Index 150

v
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Preface

This book had its origins 35 years ago, when a colony of

cats at Cambridge Universitys Sub-Department of Animal
Behaviour became available for the study of play in kittens
and what this could reveal about the origins of behaviour in
other species, including humans. A small group of academics,
graduate students and research assistants were involved in the
work over the next 15 years. Both of us were part of this group
and conceived the ambition of writing a book about play.
However, we were also preoccupied with many other duties.
Work on the present book was put off again and again, although
we collaborated on two other books, one of which is now in its
third edition (Bateson & Martin, 1999; Martin & Bateson, 2007).
Finally, though, we started to develop our ideas about play in
book form.
The different meanings given to the term play have cre-
ated much confusion and have contributed to the view that play
is enigmatic and almost beyond the boundaries of science. The
categorisation of play as any behaviour that is not serious has
tended to trivialise an activity that is likely to have important
beneficial outcomes, both in humans and other species. We
became particularly interested in the links between playfulness
and creativity, and aware of the difference between generating
novel forms of behaviour or ideas (creativity) and implemen-
ting worthwhile inventions in a practical way (innovation).
Inevitably the book has taken on a different shape from what
we had originally envisaged and the focus has enlarged to

vii
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viii Preface

take in other aspects of human affairs. Playful play can be a

serious business.
One lay reader of an early draft version complained about
our cautious use of phrases like may be important and so forth,
as though we were not quite confident enough to make the big
points without qualifying them. We accept that this book is
academic in its approach, and that where the evidence is equiv-
ocal or absent, we have said so. The book is aimed in part at
academic biologists and psychologists. Our emphasis is on
empirical evidence and on where further research needs to be
carried out because the evidence is incomplete. However, we
hope that our conclusions will also interest those who are con-
cerned with creativity and innovation, whether for the public
good or for commercial benefit. Playfulness in adult life affects
the readiness with which people develop new ideas and has a
broad influence on human relations. Given the importance of
play in child development, we hope too that those involved in
education will read it.

Patrick Bateson
Paul Martin
November 2012
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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to a number of friends and colleagues

who read the drafts of the whole book. They are: Teresa Belton,
Robert Fagen, Emma Flynn, Kevin Laland, Eugene Lim, Corina
Logan and Aubrey Manning. We thank them and the following
who read parts of the book in draft: Max Alexander, Jacqueline
Barnes, Anna Bateson, Zahaan Bharmal, Nick Humphrey, Ben
Malbon, Harriet Martin and Daniel Nettle. It goes without say-
ing that they all contributed to the final version in a variety of
invaluable ways and that all sins of omission and commission
are our own. For part of the project, P.B. received a grant for his
research from the Leverhulme Trust, which he thanks for its
support.

ix
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1
Introduction

This book is about the role of play and playfulness in

creativity and innovation. We argue that play is an important
form of behaviour that facilitates creativity, and hence inno-
vation, in both the natural world and human society.
Although the consequences of play are most obvious during
the lifetime of each individual, play also affects biological
evolution by enabling organisms to adapt rapidly to novel
environments.
The essence of our argument is that playful behaviour
and playful thought can generate radically new approaches to
challenges set by the physical and social environment. While
our approach grew out of observations of non-human animals
by biologists, we argue that humans and organisations can
exploit playfulness as a tool for fostering creativity and
innovation.
Play evidently has many different meanings, some of
which refer to aspects of behaviour and thinking that are very
different from the playful mode of behaviour on which we
shall focus. For example, rule-governed competitive sports
are played, but they are rarely conducted playfully. Sports
and many games are often treated as being deadly serious.
Similarly, theatrical plays in which the actors are required to
have learned their lines are not associated with the lightness of
mood which we regard as being so important in playful crea-
tivity. Stage improvisation and ad libbing, however, may come
closer to what we have in mind.

1
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2 Introduction

playfulness

Apart from its many different colloquial usages, play  as

used by biologists and psychologists  is a broad term denot-
ing almost any activity that is not serious or work. Play
may also be defined more specifically, according to several
criteria:

* the behaviour is spontaneous and rewarding to the individual

* it is intrinsically motivated and its performance is a goal in
itself
* the behaviour occurs in a protected context when the player is
neither ill nor stressed
* the behaviour is incomplete or exaggerated relative to
non-playful behaviour in adults
* it is performed repeatedly.

While play is often regarded principally as an activity of young

animals or children, it also occurs in adults of many species.
Part of our thesis in this book rests on the distinction we
have drawn between observable play behaviour and an under-
lying mood state that we refer to as playfulness. Play behaviour
may or may not be playful. Playfulness is a particular positive
mood state that may (or may not) be manifested in observable
behaviour. Playfulness facilitates and accompanies playful play,
a subset of broadly defined play, which is distinct from what
happens in formal games, theatrical performances and so forth.
Play and playfulness do overlap, but we believe the distinction is
important because some aspects of play behaviour are not play-
ful, particularly when they start to merge into overt competition
or aggression. Aspects of what many biologists and psychologists
would subsume under the general heading of play may be driven
by frustration or striving for social dominance. An encounter that
starts off in a way that is described as playful may degenerate into
overt aggression, when the lightness of mood associated with
other aspects of play seems to be lacking. Conversely, playful
individuals are not necessarily playing, even though they are in
a playful mood. We shall consider in greater detail how play and
playfulness are characterised in Chapter 2.
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Creativity and innovation 3

The notion of playful play is our own and is not to be

found in the academic literature. We suggest that this new
category helps in the understanding of a motivational state
that is important in creativity. Our restrictive use of the term
is captured in Figure 1.1, which shows the incomplete overlap
between this aspect of play and other aspects encompassed by
less restrictive but widely accepted definitions of play. Both
these domains overlap with an even larger one in which the
loosest definitions of play are more extensive and the variety
of meanings is evident.
We recognise that play continues to be something of
an enigma and much more needs to be discovered. In our
final chapter we outline some of the many questions that
remain to be answered through empirical research. Until
they have a firmer basis in evidence, some of the widely
believed theories about play must remain in the realm of
conjecture.

creativity and innovation

In this book we draw a simple distinction between creativity

and innovation. In human behaviour, creativity refers broadly
to generating new ideas, whereas innovation refers to changing
the way in which things are done. Although creativity and
innovation are often treated as synonymous (e.g. Feist, 1998),
we believe the terms can usefully be distinguished. Creativity is
displayed when an individual develops a novel form of behav-
iour or a novel idea, regardless of its practical uptake and sub-
sequent application. Innovation means implementing a novel
form of behaviour or an idea in order to obtain a practical
benefit which is then adopted by others. As Max Mckeown
(2008) succinctly put it: Innovation is new stuff that is made
useful. In many of the human examples that we consider later,
creative people are not necessarily innovative, and innovative
people may rely on the novel ideas or actions of other more
creative people.
The distinction between creativity and innovation is
harder to observe in other species. Even so, animals can be
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4 Introduction

Playfulness Play as used by

Playful play biologists and
psychologists

“Play” as used
colloquially for many
different activities

Figure 1.1. The relationship between playfulness and play as commonly

described by biologists and psychologists. These overlap with the many
different colloquial usages of play for competitive games, theatrical
events and so forth.

creative and they do innovate; for example, by discovering new

ways of obtaining food. Considerable time can elapse between a
creative act by one individual and a subsequent innovation in
which other individuals adopt the new way of doing things.
What is observed is often the end product of a long process.

the thesis

The core of our argument is that new forms of behaviour and

new modes of thought frequently derive from play, and espe-
cially from playful play. Such activity is a driver of creativity
and, less directly, of innovation, both in humans and in other
species. Play generates novel ways of dealing with the environ-
ment, most of which lead nowhere but some of which turn out
to be useful.
Much of animal and human behaviour involves trade-offs
between conflicting requirements. In making those trade-offs,
the individual may be trapped on the metaphorical equivalent
of a false mountain summit  what engineers call a local
optimum  with a higher peak beyond. When that happens,
the individual needs a way of getting off the lower peak in order
to discover the most satisfactory solution  the global optimum.
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The thesis 5

We shall argue that play is an evolved biological adaptation that

enables the individual to escape from local optima and discover
better solutions.
The concept of play applies to thoughts as well as visible
actions. Humans can think playfully as well as act playfully,
generating novel patterns of thought in a protected context. A
large part of human play goes on in the mind and may not
manifest itself in overt behaviour. When play is overt, it may
be seen more often in children than in adults, but adult humans
are perfectly capable of playing and, we shall argue, sometimes
benefit from it. As George Bernard Shaw remarked: We dont
stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop
playing.
Play enables the individual to discover new approaches to
dealing with the world. We distinguish this, as others have
done, from exploration, whereby the individual systematically
gathers new information about the world. Typically, explo-
ratory behaviour in animals begins cautiously and, as the indi-
vidual gathers confidence, becomes both more extensive and
more intense. It is not immediately repeated unless the previ-
ously explored features of the environment change (Fagen,
1981). Play behaviour, on the other hand, is generally far from
cautious: it is typically repeated many times and its very exu-
berance often leads the player into blind alleys. Who cares
about blind alleys when you are having fun? But even though
play and exploration are substantially different, they are not
entirely unrelated, and humans may sometimes be regarded as
exploring playfully.
A notable characteristic of play behaviour is that it gener-
ally does not appear to have an immediate practical goal or
benefit. Indeed, some writers implicitly define play as anything
that seems pointless. Play appears to provide its own reward, at
least in the short term, by being intrinsically enjoyable. The
general presumption has been that the more tangible biological
benefits of play usually come later in the individuals lifetime;
for example, in the form of improved physical, cognitive or
social skills. The gap in time between playing and making use
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6 Introduction

of the experience acquired during play may be measured in

months or even years.
This temporal disjunction between experience and later
performance has proved important in interpreting apparently
insightful solutions to problems, when the individual seem-
ingly plumps instantly for the right answer without testing
the alternatives. The experience that enabled it to respond
promptly to the new challenge occurred earlier in its life,
when playing. We discuss this important aspect of experience
gained through play in Chapters 5 and 6. Even though a time
gap often occurs between play experience and beneficial out-
comes, the effect of play may in some cases be immediate. In
such cases, the individual acquires skills that increase its cur-
rent chances of survival or it solves a problem, with immediate
benefit.
Among the biological benefits of play, we contend, are
creativity and innovation. In Chapter 7 we discuss how play
and playfulness may boost the creativity of adult humans,
both as individuals and collectively through the activities of
organisations. In Chapter 8 we consider the evidence that child-
rens creativity can be enhanced by play. Playfulness in humans
is often associated with humour, and we discuss this relation-
ship in Chapter 9. States of consciousness that are different
from the normal waking state are obvious enough in dreaming
and daydreaming. The dreaming or daydreaming individual
may be generating novel patterns of thought and, in some
senses, does this in a protected context. Both are features of
play. We discuss the parallels between play and altered states of
consciousness in Chapter 10, and go on to consider how some
drug-induced states can be associated with enhanced creativity.
Finally, in Chapter 11, we attempt to pull the threads together
and offer suggestions for future research.

history

Before going further, it is worth briefly considering the long

history of debate over the nature of play and its role in the
development of individual humans. The role of play in the
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History 7

education of children has engaged numerous writers from a

variety of backgrounds over many centuries. Plato, writing
some 2,400 years ago in The Laws, argued that playful prac-
tice when young is important for the development of adult
skills. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (171278) thought that play in
a natural environment civilises the child. The philosopher
Immanuel Kant (17241804) took a romantic view of play as
liberating the spirit. So too did the poet Friedrich Schiller
(17591805), who believed that play allows the release of
pent-up energy. The psychologist Karl Groos (18611946)
argued, like Plato, that adult skills are acquired during child-
hood play. The educational reformer John Dewey
(18591952) was influenced by Rousseau and regarded play
as crucially important in the development of the child.
Sigmund Freud (18561939) wrote about its importance to
an individuals subsequent behaviour, and many other psy-
choanalysts and psychotherapists have followed in his foot-
steps (e.g. Erikson, 1963). None of these authors explicitly
linked play to creativity. Herbert Spencer did, however, and
suggested that play is the source of artistic creativity
(Spencer, 1872).
The historian Johan Huizinga (1955), taking a very broad
view of play, argued that it is important in the development of
all aspects of human culture. As he put it: Genuine, pure play is
one of the main bases of civilisation. The Russian psychologist
Lev Vygotsky (1967), writing in the 1930s, took a more specific
view: he believed that literacy and imagination derive from the
actions involved in play. Another influential developmental
psychologist, Jean Piaget (1952), initially believed that play is
important for the development of a logical mind, but in a later
book argued that play is important in the development of the
childs imagination (Piaget, 1962). In more recent times, schol-
arly writing on play has proliferated.1
Some writers, taking a similar line to Vygotsky, have
argued that play is the precursor of imaginative writing (e.g.
Smith, 1982). Brian Sutton-Smith (1986) suggested that the
foundations for an aptitude for imaginative writing are estab-
lished in babyhood when babies and their mothers play face
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8 Introduction

games with each other and, through incongruity, joy and

laughter, establish the basis for expressive performances.
He concluded, though without citing any empirical evidence:
This is the most probable source of both later symbolic play
and later story-telling. In a more sceptical vein than in his
earlier work, Sutton-Smith (1997) noted that while various
theories disagree about the specific kinds of development
instigated by play, they all assume that play experience does
indeed transfer to other activities that are not in themselves
forms of play. Sutton-Smith does use the term play very
broadly to cover many serious activities, and we suspect
that much of what he referred to as the ambiguity of play
stems from the multifaceted use of the word and not the more
specific sense in which we use it here.
An important milestone in the development of a scientific
approach to play was Robert Fagens (1981) book Animal Play
Behavior. Fagen adopted an evolutionary approach and raised
the question of why birds and mammals should spend time
and energy on play, incurring risks as they do so. A number of
other important books on play have appeared more recently.2
None, however, has explored at length the link between play-
fulness and creativity.

conclusions

Apart from its multifaceted usages, play is a broad term

denoting any activity that is not serious or work and is
therefore generally associated with childhood rather than
adult life. Biologists typically define play more specifically
as intrinsically rewarding behaviour that occurs in a pro-
tected context in which players are largely insulated from
the consequences of their behaviour, and uses behaviour
patterns in unusual forms or combinations. The biological
concept of play applies to thoughts as well as physical
actions. Playfulness is a positive mood state that facilitates
and accompanies playful play, a subset of broadly defined
play. Our thesis is that play, and especially playful play,
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Conclusions 9

facilitates creativity  sometimes immediately and some-

times after a considerable delay. We distinguish creativity,
the generation of novel actions or thoughts, from innovation,
in which new ways of doing things are implemented and
adopted by others.
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2
The biology of play

The definition of play has been a recurrent bugbear in the

biological literature, as Robert Fagen (1981) recognised in his
groundbreaking book Animal Play Behavior. Part of the problem
is that human observers are all too ready to interpret other
species behaviour in terms of their own experience. Their
definitions are ostensive rather than operational  that is to
say, they point to a real example of the behaviour and say:
That is what we mean by play. For those scientists who are
not present to be shown what is meant, the definition may be
supported by verbal descriptions, drawings or videos. Such
descriptions of play are often accompanied by the statement
that the behaviour is not serious, in the sense that it does not
apparently satisfy an immediate biological need of the individ-
ual, such as obtaining food or winning a fight.
The label play, when applied to animal behaviour, draws
attention to how readily humans project onto other animals the
perceptions they have of themselves and their fellow human
beings. Such projection was revealed in many peoples reac-
tions to a beautifully illustrated book called Why Cats Paint by
Busch and Silver (1994), which caused a flurry of interest among
art critics. The book contained paintings supposedly produced
by cats. Like those by some captive chimpanzees, the cats artis-
tic creations were seen as joyous and full of life. Moreover,
the cats were not simply creating abstract pictures, they were
said to be doing so playfully. The book attracted serious reviews
in major newspapers, amazing though this may seem. The

10
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Defining play 11

reviewers had apparently failed to notice the list of references at

the back of the book, which included telltale entries such as this:

Lord-osis, J. (1991) Pawnography: Paw marking as a mode of sexual

communication among domestic cats in Sweden. J. Appl. Aesthetics, Vol VI.

The whole book was, of course, a spoof. It demonstrated (play-

fully) how easily humans, scientists included, fall into the trap
of supposing that animals are like us. This is not to deny the
growing body of scientific opinion that most, if not all, verte-
brates are conscious and aware of their surroundings and expe-
riences (Bekoff, 2010). Nevertheless, considerable care must
be applied when articulating categories of behaviour observed
in other species. Establishing such categories provides the
basis for the measurement that is a crucial part of behavioural
biology.
In the case of play, scepticism about the distinctiveness of
this category is often shrugged off because, it is claimed, every-
body recognises play when they see it. However, recognition is
not the same as agreement. When a kitten plays, observers will
readily agree about its activities and their quantified measure-
ments will correlate strongly with each other (Caro et al., 1979).
But when a fish does something that might be called play,
many scientists will remain sceptical about whether it is really
playing (e.g. Manning & Dawkins, 2012). The subtle attributions
that accompany the naming of behavioural categories in ani-
mals have to be watched carefully. This care should be extended
to the way that childrens behaviour is categorised by adult
humans. Using a term like play to describe a childs behaviour
may imply an understanding of the childs motivation that goes
beyond the actual evidence. Such an assumption may lead to
the conclusion that everything a child does without obvious
need is play. In our view, play and playfulness are more specific
categories with other defining characteristics.

defining play

Over the years a number of psychologists and biologists have

attempted to bring order to the subject of play by listing the
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12 The biology of play

various criteria by which play behaviour might be recognised

(e.g. Burghardt, 2005; Fagen, 1981). Five defining features of
play, which have emerged from studies of play in many species,
are central to our thesis. They are as follows.
1. The behaviour is spontaneous and rewarding to the individual; it
is intrinsically motivated and its performance serves as a goal in
itself. Play is fun.
2. The player is to some extent protected from the normal
consequences of serious behaviour. The behaviour appears to
have no immediate practical goal or benefit. Social forms of the
behaviour may be preceded or accompanied by specific signals or
facial expressions indicating that the behaviour is not serious.
Play is the antithesis of work or serious behaviour.
3. The behaviour consists of actions or, in the case of humans,
thoughts, expressed in novel combinations. Social forms of the
behaviour may be accompanied by temporary changes in social
relationships, such as role reversals, in which a normally
dominant individual may become temporarily subordinate while
playing, and vice versa. Play is a generator of novelty.
4. Individual actions or thoughts are performed repeatedly (though
they do not resemble stereotypies such as the circular pacing
seen in animals kept in deprived conditions); they may also be
incomplete or exaggerated relative to non-playful behaviour in
adults. Play looks different.
5. The behaviour is sensitive to prevailing conditions and occurs
only when the player is free from illness or stress. Play is an
indicator of well-being.
These criteria overlap extensively with those articulated by
Gordon Burghardt (2005), who devoted a substantial portion
of his book to characterising the defining features of play and
relating them to observational evidence from numerous spe-
cies.3 His analysis led him to suggest five criteria by which play
can be recognised. They are broadly similar to the core features
listed above, though we do have some quibbles. Burghardt
insisted that all five criteria should apply if an animal is said
to be playing. This may make application difficult, since obtain-
ing evidence about function and the animals internal state
are problematical. One of his criteria applies primarily to social
behaviour and is not a core feature of object play. Moreover,
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Play in humans 13

Burghardt relaxed the criteria when considering the precursors

of play in vertebrates other than birds and mammals, and in
some invertebrates.
The five criteria listed above define play in the sense in
which many biologists and psychologists use the term, and how
we use it in this book. But they do not define playful play. For
play to be playful, a sixth feature must also be present:
6. Playful play (as distinct from the broader biological category of
play) is accompanied by a particular positive mood state in which
the individual is more inclined to behave (and, in the case of
humans, think) in a spontaneous and flexible way.

We have drawn a distinction between playful play and non-

playful play. Playfulness, the defining feature of playful play,
is a positive mood state that is not always detectable in observ-
able behaviour. The behaviour of a playful human is captured
by numerous synonyms, including cheerful, frisky, frolicsome,
good-natured, joyous, merry, rollicking, spirited, sprightly and
vivacious. Some of these terms relate to human emotions that
could not be readily identified in animals without much anthro-
pomorphic projection. Some, though, are descriptive of visible
behaviour and can be defined ostensively, such as when kittens
engage vigorously in social play. In animals, as in humans,
playfulness may be inferred from the context in which it occurs.
What the animals do may vary  from playing with objects at
one moment to playing with another individual at the next 
but the playful state underlying their behaviour is the same.

play in humans

Play, as defined above, can manifest itself in many different

ways in humans. It may be solitary, social, pretend, imaginary,
symbolic, verbal, socio-dramatic, constructional, rough-and-
tumble, manipulative, and so forth (Pellegrini, 2009; Power,
2000). These different forms of play differ in their structure,
their underlying motivation and, quite probably, their biolog-
ical functions. For example, the rough-and-tumble play of a
4-year-old child wrestling with another 4-year-old is visibly
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14 The biology of play

very different from that of, say, a solitary 10-year-old staring into
space, lost in a fantasy. The criteria for recognising play in ani-
mals work well when applied to the rough-and-tumble play of a
child, but pretend play requires additional definition (Mitchell,
2007; Smith, 2010). Applying non-literal meanings to actions
and objects is a central feature of pretend play in humans. It
involves imitative actions in a non-functional context, such as
pressing a toy stethoscope against the chest of a doll.
Such instances of pretend play are easy to define by point-
ing to examples, and a case can be made for defining similar
behaviour seen in the great apes. For example, young female
chimpanzees behave maternally towards sticks, ceasing to do
so when they have real offspring to care for (Kahlenberg &
Wrangham, 2010). This stick-carrying behaviour consists of
holding or cradling sticks, pieces of bark, small logs or woody
vines with the hand or mouth, underarm or, most commonly,
tucked between the abdomen and thigh. Individuals carry sticks
for periods ranging from a minute to more than 4 hours, during
which time they rest, walk, climb, sleep and feed as usual. The
occurrence of stick-carrying is greatest among juvenile females
and resembles the pretend play of human children.
The pretend play of older children, who can describe
what they are thinking and doing, may be viewed as part of a
package of characteristically human behaviour and cognition,
much of which is internalised. This complex package includes
the use of language, self-awareness, and an understanding
of how other humans think and are likely to behave (Smith,
2010). The definition we have used above would not readily
apply to such examples, although many could be described as
playful.
We should emphasise an important point contained in
the core features listed above  namely, that the concept of
play applies to thoughts as well as to overt physical actions.
Humans can play in the realm of pure thought and their play
can generate creative solutions to problems. We return to
this theme later when considering altered states of conscious-
ness, such as dreaming, and their relationship with play and
creativity.
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Bad play 15

bad play

Our criteria for recognising play would exclude behaviour in

which the player is stressed or hurt by another. In reporting
their own experiences, some authors have described how fright-
ening rough-and-tumble play can be and the humiliation of, say,
being pinned to the ground by a bigger child. These unpleasant
aspects of human play can include teasing, bullying, shun-
ning, hurting and being hurt. For instance, Robin Henig (2008)
wrote: I well remember this darker side of play from my own
girlhood . . . I had to wait to be asked to play jump-rope and
had to face embarrassment if I missed a skip or  worse, much
worse  if nobody ended up asking me. Even pretend play could
take an ugly turn if my playmates made their dolls say nasty
things.
The negative side of play is also apparent in other animals.
For example, researchers observed how male adult horses who
were most likely to initiate what looked like play were also the
ones who, according to other criteria, were the most chronically
stressed. The stressed horses behaved as though the play were
an outlet for frustrated aggression (Hausberger et al., 2012). If
so, this would not constitute play in the terms that we listed
earlier, and it would certainly not be playful play. Similarly,
Bateson (2011) noticed how tense kittens could be just before
launching themselves at a sibling. They would arch their backs
and swish their tails. If grabbed from behind by a human during
that preparatory phase, they would scream, apparently in fright,
and retreat from the other individual. They lacked the positive,
relaxed mood associated with playfulness, but if they had not
been disturbed, their mood would have relaxed and their beha-
viour would have satisfied the core features we identified. Mood
can also change in the opposite direction. Occasionally, social
play degenerates into a spat and the behaviour becomes aggres-
sive. For one of the participating individuals, the encounter can
become disagreeable and the playful mood rapidly evaporates.
Although some writers continue to describe the behaviour in
such encounters as play, we think the change of mood means
that the behaviour can no longer be regarded as playful, and if
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16 The biology of play

the individual becomes stressed then it may no longer even

constitute play.

play across the animal kingdom

Play behaviour has been recognised in a large number of mam-

mal and bird species. As far as the behaviour of young mammals
is concerned, it seems likely that few, if any, species will be
found where play in one form or another is absent. In birds, play
has been recorded in parrots, hornbills, babblers and members
of the crow family (Diamond & Bond, 2003). The existence or
not of play in other vertebrate taxonomic groups is much more
controversial (Manning & Dawkins, 2012). Gordon Burghardt
(2005) examined the possibility of play in taxonomic groups
other than birds and mammals. He identified instances of
behaviour in fish and reptiles that looked rather like object
play in birds and mammals. According to Burghardt, some
invertebrates  such as octopus and even spiders  might also
exhibit play-like behaviour. For example, sexual acts between
males and immature female spiders that do not result in the
union of sperm and egg are found to decrease the subsequent
latency to an act resulting in fertilisation and to increase mater-
nal investment in the offspring (Pruitt & Riechert, 2011). In a
subsequent paper, Pruitt, Burghardt and Riechert (2012) argued
that the non-conceptive behaviour had formal similarities with
play in birds and mammals. The conclusion that spiders and
other invertebrates engage in play may seem implausible, even
if it does follow logically from a precise definition that works
for birds and mammals. What this example illustrates is the
considerable difficulty in defining play.

heterogeneous categories

As in humans, the play of other species can manifest itself in

distinctly different forms. For example, when describing play in
a mammal as generally playful as the domestic cat, it becomes
clear that different components of its play behaviour are dis-
played in different situations. For instance, arching of the back,
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Social play 17

which is often seen in social play, does not appear in play with
objects (Barrett & Bateson, 1978). Similarly, pouncing on objects,
especially furry objects, is not seen in locomotor play (Egan,
1976; Martin & Bateson, 1985). Moreover, the developmental
trajectories of these different forms of play are not the same.
In cats, social play starts well before weaning, whereas object
play increases sharply in the seventh week after birth, several
weeks after the kittens have started to take solid food (Barrett &
Bateson, 1978). Different structural features are therefore
required to characterise these different subcategories of play.
Dolphins are magnificently playful animals and particu-
larly good subjects for investigating the different manifestations
of play. Captive dolphins play readily with balls and other toys.
In the wild, they play with feathers, seaweed, sponges and other
objects. They also play with bubble rings, which they create for
themselves from their blowholes. Dolphins play with these
items in a variety of ways, such as pushing them around, throw-
ing them in the air, or swimming through their bubble rings.
They are also highly social, playing extensively with each other.
Thirty-seven different types of play have been described in the
young of the bottlenose dolphin (Kuczaj et al., 2006). Examples
include holding a ball, swimming and tossing a ball simultane-
ously, using the mouth or chin to dribble a ball at the surface
or under the water, pushing a ball with a body part, trapping a
ball between a hard surface and part of the body, using a ball as
a rubbing tool, and pushing a ball into an enclosed space and
then releasing it. These and other categories of play are sponta-
neously produced by the dolphins and need no reinforcement
by trainers with rewards of food or praise.

social play

In some species, specific social signals are used to denote that

what follows is play rather than serious behaviour. Dogs, for
example, signal their readiness to play by dropping down on
their forelegs and wagging their tails. In domestic cats, a bout
of social play is often initiated by one kitten crouching with
its head held low and paddling its back legs before pouncing
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18 The biology of play

on another kitten (West, 1974). Chimpanzees have a special

play-face  a distinctive facial expression that precedes and
accompanies a bout of social play.
Social play is marked by a degree of cooperation between
the players. Competition is limited and roles are often reversed.
So individuals that are normally dominant in non-playful con-
texts may allow themselves to adopt a subordinate role during
play and vice versa. A mother cat playing with her kitten will
sometimes be the object of a playful attack and sometimes
initiate it (Mendl, 1988). This exchange of roles during play is
particularly striking when members of different species are
reared together, such as dogs and cats, cats and rats, dogs and
deer, dolphins and whales, and so on.4 The participants play
enthusiastically and frequently exchange roles, as if they share
the same set of basic rules for play.
When social play is in full swing, many patterns of
serious behaviour are apparent but they are not exactly the
same in form or motivation. Playing kittens may pounce on
each other, as though fighting or attacking prey, but their
biting is soft and when they wrestle their claws are retracted.
(This seems to be an inhibition that emerges as the animals
get older, because earlier in development they can bite hard
and scratch each other.) Similarly, playing monkeys may
mount each other, as though sexually, but no actual penetra-
tion occurs.

occurrence in the life cycle

Despite all the problems with definition, the general consensus

is that play is typically something that children and young
mammals do. Social play in domestic cats, for example, first
occurs at around 34 weeks after birth. Meredith West (1974)
found that a composite measure of social play rises to a peak
12 weeks after birth and then declines, although some compo-
nents of social play that involve physical contact peak earlier
(Barrett & Bateson, 1978). In wild-living cheetahs, Tim Caro
(1995) found that social play involving contact peaks 5 weeks
after birth. Other field studies have similarly found play to be
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Sensitivity to well-being 19

largely restricted to periods in early life (e.g. olive baboons:

Chalmers, 1980; Southern fur seals: Harcourt, 1991a).
While the occurrence of play tends to decline with the
onset of adulthood, it may still be seen in later life. Play is obvious
at times in adult domestic cats and dogs. Their behaviour is
not just a consequence of domestication, because play in adults
has also been seen in many wild species including wolves, coy-
otes, Cape hunting dogs, gorillas and dolphins (e.g. Kuczaj et al.,
2006).5 And, of course, play is also seen in adult humans, when
they have the time and inclination. Adult humans typically play
less than children, but we suggest later that they have much to
gain from deliberately adopting a more playful approach to life.

sensitivity to well-being

Another of the defining features of play that we listed above

is its sensitivity to prevailing conditions. In general, play is an
indicator of psychological and physical well-being (Held &
Spinka, 2011). It is usually the first activity to disappear if an
individual is stressed, anxious, hungry or ill. Experimental evi-
dence backs this up. In one study, for example, playing rats
that were exposed to cat hair immediately stopped playing or
soliciting play, and their play remained suppressed for several
days after this mildly stressful experience (Panksepp, 1998). A
number of laboratory and field studies have suggested that
young mammals that have been short of food play less com-
pared with when they are better fed; examples include squirrel
monkeys (Baldwin & Baldwin, 1977) and rock hyrax and tree
hyrax (Magin, 1988). Young vervet monkeys in East Africa do
not play in dry years when food is scarce, but appear to com-
pensate by playing a great deal when food is plentiful (Lee,
1984). Similarly, gelada baboons play more during rainy periods
when food is abundant (Barrett, Dunbar & Dunbar, 1992). In
another experimental study, wild-living meerkats were found to
play more when they were provisioned with extra food (Sharpe
et al., 2002).
Shortage of food tends to suppress play in humans as well.
In a comparison of under-nourished and well-nourished children
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20 The biology of play

aged 718 months in West Bengal, the under-nourished boys (for

whom the sample size was adequate, unlike the girls) showed less
vigour in their play (Graves, 1976). Similarly, a study of Kenyan
toddlers found a correlation between the childrens food intake
and how much they played (Sigman et al., 1989). Many aspects
of poverty, such as a requirement to work, can reduce a childs
opportunity for play (Milteer & Ginsburg, 2012). All are a cause
for concern, but reduced motivation to play, caused by poor
health and poor nutrition, will compound the other problems.
As in other species, childrens play happens only when basic
short-term needs have been satisfied and the individual is free
from stress.

intrinsic motivation

The motivation to play has many of the same characteristics

as the motivation for other activities such as eating. The more
an individual has been deprived of play, the more it will play
when given the opportunity, as though compensating for the
previous shortfall (e.g. (Jensen, 1999; Wood-Gush, Vestergaard &
Petersen, 1990). More saliently, an individual is prepared to
work in order to be given the opportunity to engage in play.
Opportunities to play are themselves rewarding, reinforcing
the activity that provides the individual with the chance to
play. In one experiment, for example, an opportunity to play
worked effectively as a reward when rats made the correct choice
in a maze (Humphreys & Einon, 1981). Like food, the opportunity
to play is a natural reinforcer of other behaviour. Moreover, the
same neural mechanisms that are involved in food and drug
rewards are involved in social play (e.g. Panksepp, 2011).
An individual absorbed in playing seems not to require
any external reward. Many experimental psychologists investi-
gating how behaviour is controlled have tended to focus on
external rewards or punishments, which are more amenable
to experimental manipulation. External rewards such as
food are powerful ways of shaping behaviour. In the first half
of the twentieth century, B. F. Skinner founded a whole school
of research in which animals responses to different schedules
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Individual differences 21

of reinforcement with food were automatically recorded. When

the reinforcements occur in a particular context, that context
can itself become rewarding. So a food reward delivered after
the performance of a particular act may be given only when the
trainer has, for example, triggered a device that emits a clicking
sound. After a while, the sound alone can be used to reward
another act. In the language of experimental analysis of behav-
iour, the sound is a secondary reinforce, whereas the food is the
primary reinforcer.
Both primary and secondary reinforcers are external and,
in the case described, depend on the trained individual being
intrinsically motivated to take food. The motivation for learn-
ing the rewarded behaviour is said to be extrinsic. In the case of
play, particularly when the individual is playing on its own, the
motivation is intrinsic  that is, no external reward is needed.
In social play the reactions of the play partner may provide an
additional reward, increasing the likelihood that the initiator
will continue playing. If the partner does not respond playfully,
the initiator will stop. Nevertheless, the initiators behaviour
starts spontaneously and may be marked by a characteristic
play signal. The spontaneous character of the behaviour is
obvious and highlights the distinction between extrinsic and
intrinsic motivation.
The various forms of play within a species, and the differ-
ent ways in which these change with age, suggest that different
forms of play are controlled differently (Barrett & Bateson, 1978;
Bateson, 1981; Chalmers, 1980; Harcourt, 1991a). Moreover, as
play merges with adult behaviour, the motivational systems
probably change with age. Aggressive acts can become incor-
porated into social play, and prey-catching in carnivores can
become incorporated into object play.6

individual differences

As in other aspects of their biology and psychology, individuals

differ from one another in how much they play and how playful
they generally are. Every quantitative study of play finds con-
siderable variation between individuals. This variability might
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22 The biology of play

reflect differences in any one of the factors that affect intrinsic

motivation, but the characteristic behavioural style of the indi-
vidual, often referred to as its personality, also plays a part.
Some individuals tend to be high-spirited even in difficult cir-
cumstances, whereas others are typically dour and difficult to
rouse into play at any time. Such differences have been found,
for example, in chimpanzees (Hoof, 1973) and vervet monkeys
(McGuire, Raleigh & Pollack, 1994).
Genes can also affect playfulness. In a comparison of two
genetically different strains of rats, one strain (Lewis) consis-
tently played more than the other (Fischer) strain (Siviy et al.,
2003). The differences were present even after social isolation.
When the Fischer rat pups were fostered by Lewis mothers, they
remained less playful than the Lewis pups, suggesting that the
behavioural difference in playfulness was due to genetic differ-
ences rather than the mothers behaviour.
Behavioural differences between breeds of domestic cats
and dogs have been widely described (Hart & Miller, 1985;
Mendl & Harcourt, 1988). These differences include differences
in playfulness. A large study of domestic dogs found that indi-
viduals differed markedly in their playfulness (Svartberg &
Forkman, 2002). Behavioural data from over 15,000 dogs of
164 different breeds were used to investigate the existence
of personality traits in these animals. Each dogs interest in
playing with a stranger was carefully tested. In one test, for
instance, the stranger gave the handler a strong piece of rag.
The handler dragged the rag on the ground in front of the dog.
Before the dog grabbed it, if the dog was willing to do so, the
rag was tossed several times between handler and stranger and
then thrown away from the dog, which was free to run after
and catch it. The dogs reaction varied from no interest in the
tossing of the rag to actively playing and following the thrown
rag. Statistical analysis of the data for many categories of
behaviour revealed the existence of five traits, among which
was playfulness, meaning in this case propensity to play.
Within any one species, many of the behavioural differences
between individuals can be attributed to genetic differences
(Spady & Ostrander, 2008), but genetic studies that attempt to
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Responses to environmental conditions 23

identify particular genes affecting play behaviour have yet to

be carried out.
Differences arising from differences in genes do not, of
course, exclude the possibility of large environmental effects.
An experiment involving young pigs showed how their experi-
ence before the age of weaning could affect the amount that
they played more than a month after weaning (Dudink et al.,
2006). Starting at around 2 weeks after birth, piglets were
exposed to a sound cue that immediately preceded access to
an enriched environment containing straw and mixed seeds.
These piglets subsequently played significantly more than
those in a control group in which the environmental enrich-
ment procedure was not preceded by the sound cue. The results
suggested that being able to predict a positive change in their
environment reduced the stress of the piglets and, as a conse-
quence, they became more playful.
Males and females in many species show consistent differ-
ences in their play, often reflecting sex differences in their
non-playful adult behaviour (Meaney & Stewart, 1985). The
stick-carrying by chimpanzees that we described earlier, which
looks similar to pretend play in children, occurs much more
frequently in females than in males (Kahlenberg & Wrangham,
2010). This sex difference could not be explained by a general
propensity for females to play with objects more than males,
because other types of objects are played with more by males.
Males in many species, including humans, also engage in more
rough-and-tumble play than do females (Auger & Olesen, 2009;
Meaney & Stewart, 1985; Power, 2000). Many behavioural differ-
ences between individuals, including differences in play, may be
attributed to their sex.

responses to environmental conditions

Individual differences in behaviour sometimes represent condi-

tional tactics available to all members of a species. In one set
of environmental conditions a form of behaviour appropriate
to those conditions is expressed, while in other conditions the
individual expresses a distinctly different form of behaviour
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24 The biology of play

appropriate to those different conditions (Bateson, Martin &

Young, 1981; Caro & Bateson, 1986). The different forms of beha-
viour are characteristic for the species and their development
appears to be triggered by the conditions rather than being
learned.
One example of this phenomenon relates to the age at
which a young mammal becomes nutritionally independent
from its mother and the impact this has on the expression of
play behaviour. A considerable body of experimental evidence
suggests that early-weaned domestic cats and rats play more
with objects than later-weaned animals (Bateson et al., 1981;
Bateson, Mendl & Feaver, 1990; Bateson & Young, 1981; Smith,
1991). The evidence suggests that the time of weaning provides
the developing young with important information about the
nature of the environment in which they will have to live, and
thereby triggers a change in their play behaviour. We stress that
these results do not contradict the general finding that chronic
starvation suppresses play (Bateson, 2000a): the early-weaned
kittens and rats in these studies were neither stressed nor
deprived of food. Intervening in the motheroffspring relation-
ship to promote early weaning is not equivalent to the whole
family experiencing a shortage of food, and the young cats and
rats had unlimited access to food after they were weaned.
In the domestic cat, mothers will generally wean their
young earlier if their energy loss during lactation is heavy
because they have a large litter. Kittens in larger litters show
a sharper decline in the rate at which they put on weight at
an earlier age than those in smaller litters, indicating earlier
weaning onto solid food when the load on the mother is greater
(Deag, 1987). Rat mothers that have been mated immediately
after the birth of one litter give birth to pups in the next litter
that play more. These pups also start to take solid food at an
earlier age (Gomendio et al., 1995). The pups behave as though
they anticipate the nutritional burden that will be placed on the
mother when she nurses the next litter. A substantial body of
research indicates that in mammals the mothers state triggers
the long-term expression of a whole suite of characteristics in
her offspring (Bateson & Gluckman, 2011). The relevance of
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Neural correlates of play 25

the early weaning studies is that individual differences in the

amount of play may reflect tactical responses to local condi-
tions, by which the developing individual gathers valuable
experience through playing while it still has the opportunity
to do so. The functional significance of this variation in play is
considered further in the next chapter.

neural correlates of play

In their book The Playful Brain, Pellis and Pellis (2009) suggest that
play represents the last great challenge to the neural sciences.
We suspect that this claim is a trifle exaggerated, since other
major challenges to the neurosciences include chronic pain,
depression, addiction, anxiety, Alzheimers and schizophrenia.
Obviously, neural activity in the brain is necessary for play to
occur, although the detailed mechanisms by which the brain
controls play remain largely unknown. Various neurotransmit-
ter systems, including opioids, endocannabinoids, dopamine
and noradrenaline, are known to have an important modulatory
role in the production of play behaviour  as they do in most
other forms of behaviour (Trezza, Baarendse & Vanderschuren,
2010). In general, the problems of relating particular brain states
to particular forms of behaviour are not trivial. How does one
distinguish between different explanations? Even the use of
brain scanning to determine which parts of the brain are most
active when an individual behaves in a particular way is fraught
with difficulties. The parts that light up may not be the brain
regions that actually control the behaviour. Techniques have
been developed to overcome these methodological difficulties,
using different approaches to eliminate different subsets of
possible explanations (Bateson & Martin, 1999). This approach,
which has not yet been used in neurological studies of play, is
equivalent to triangulation.
Research has, however, provided some clues about which
parts of the brain may be most directly involved in the expres-
sion of play behaviour. Experiments on rats, in which small
regions of the brain are selectively removed, have shown that
the medial prefrontal cortex is necessary for play to occur (Bell
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26 The biology of play

et al., 2009). However, the specificity of the effect is not clear. As

in many such studies, the lesion may well have a more general
effect on behaviour, reducing the expression of various activ-
ities besides play. Another experiment, however, suggested a
greater degree of specificity (Bell, Pellis & Kolb, 2010). Female
rats were kept from the time they were weaned until puberty
under one of two conditions. In the control condition, each
rat was caged with three juvenile females. In the experimental
condition, each rat was caged with three adult females. Young
rats housed with adults do not play, even though they experi-
ence other normal social situations similar to those of rats
reared with rats of the same age. Microscopic examination
revealed that in the brains of the rats that had played, the
neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex had shorter dendrites.
This neurological difference was not found in the orbitofrontal
cortex, which did, however, display an effect of the number
of same-aged peers present. Although both parts of the cortex
showed plastic changes, the effect of play was specific to just
one of them  the medial prefrontal cortex. This region was less
well developed in the play-deprived rats and had more connec-
tions than in animals that had played.
The presence of more neural connections in the play-
deprived rats may seem counterintuitive, but it does make sense
when considering how the brain develops. A notable feature of
the mammalian nervous system is the superabundance of con-
nections between neurons at the beginning of development. As
the individual develops, many of these connections are lost and
many cells die (Bus, Sun & Oppenheim, 2006). Those neural con-
nections that remain active are retained and the unused ones
are lost. This sculpting of the nervous system by experience
reflects the steadily improving efficiency of the bodys perceptual,
command and control systems. The play deprivation in the study
by Bell et al. (2010) appeared to interfere with this experience-
dependent removal of neural connections in the brain, although
it remains possible that the presence of adults might have
affected neuronal connections in some other unknown way.
Proving that particular brain structures are both necessary for,
and specific to, a particular form of behaviour is seldom easy.
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Conclusions 27

In Chapter 10 we describe the effects of various psycho-

active drugs on playfulness and creativity. Since the sites of
action in the brain of these drugs are often reasonably well
known, this type of research can provide some insight into the
neural basis of the behaviour.

conclusions

Having noted the longstanding difficulties in defining play, we

propose a definition based on five core features: intrinsic moti-
vation, protected context, novel combinations, repetition, and
sensitivity to conditions. These diagnostic criteria define play
in the sense that most biologists and psychologists would rec-
ognise it, as distinct from the very broad, colloquial usages of
play. We further distinguished between play and playful play
through the addition of a sixth feature  the presence of a
particular positive mood.
Many different forms of play behaviour are observed. In
animals, play with objects and play with other individuals peak
at different stages of development, with social play appearing
before object play. While play is mainly associated with the
juvenile period of life, adults also play. Sex differences in the
form and frequency of play are often observed and individuals
of the same sex within a species may differ greatly in how much
they play. Some of these differences are due to genetic differ-
ences and some are due to differences in individuals experi-
ence, particularly when environmental conditions trigger a
distinctive trajectory of development. Research on the neural
basis of play is still in its infancy but studies have implicated the
medial prefrontal cortex as being especially important.
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3
The functions of play

In this chapter, we consider the general question of plays

biological function or functions  in other words, what play is
for. This question is not directed at the individuals immediate
motivation; it is concerned with how various aspects of play
increase the individuals chances of surviving and reproducing.
The biological costs of play, such as they are, must presumably
be outweighed by its biological benefits, otherwise animals that
played would be at a disadvantage compared with those that did
not, and play would not have evolved. Our central concern in
this book is the link between play and creativity and hence
innovation. Inasmuch as this link brings benefits in terms of
enhancing the organisms chances of survival and reproduc-
tion, the way in which play does this is one of its biological
functions. However, many other functions have been proposed
for play besides enhancing creativity.

the four whys

For most behavioural biologists, the difference between moti-

vation and function is obvious, but some psychologists are
uninterested in or unaware of the distinction made by Niko
Tinbergen (1963). He recognised that biologists working on
behaviour focus on different types of problem. Some want to
know, for instance, how the expression of a particular chara-
cter is controlled, while others want to know how it benefits
the organism. Tinbergen pointed out that four fundamentally

28
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Many hypotheses 29

different types of problem are raised in biology: mechanism,

development, function and evolution. These can be expressed
in terms of four questions about any feature of an organism:
* How does it work?
* How did it develop during the lifetime of the individual?
* What is it for?
* How did it evolve over the history of the species?

In the case of a fully formed feature of an organism, including

forms of behaviour, the mechanism and function are current,
while evolution and individual development are historical
(Martin & Bateson, 2007). In this chapter we look at the func-
tions or utilities of play, and in the next chapter we consider
how the various components of play might have evolved and
how they might, in turn, affect subsequent evolution (see also
Martin, 1984a).7

many hypotheses

In the history of thinking about the biological functions of play,

a very large number of different hypotheses have been offered
(e.g. Baldwin & Baldwin, 1977). When young animals playfully
practise the complex movements they will use in earnest later
in life, their play is often thought to improve the coordination
and effectiveness of these adult behaviour patterns. The poten-
tial benefits may be more short term, however. The dashes and
jumps of a young gazelle when it is playing bring benefits that
may be almost immediate, as it faces the threat of predation
from cheetah or other carnivores intent on a quick meal, and
needs considerable skill when escaping (Gomendio, 1988). The
cheetahs own young also need to acquire running and jumping
skills early in life in order to evade capture by lions and hyenas
(Caro, 1995). Even though the benefits of play may be immedi-
ate in such cases, they may also persist and enhance the crucial
survival skills needed in adult life.
Many other benefits have been proposed over the past
century and longer. Play, it is said, may enhance an individuals
physical coordination, its ability to recognise kin, or its ability
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30 The functions of play

to cooperate with others and co-exist with other members of its

own species. Play may allow the young animal to simulate, in a
relatively safe context, potentially dangerous situations that
will arise in its adult life. (In Chapter 10 we consider how a
similar function has been proposed for dreaming.) The young
animal may learn from its mistakes, but does so in relative
safety. According to this view, play exerts its most important
developmental effects on risky adult behaviour such as fighting,
mating in the face of serious competition, catching dangerous
prey, and avoiding becoming someone elses prey. In line with
this idea, behaviour that resembles fighting and prey-catching
is especially obvious in the play of cats and other predators,
whereas intrinsically safe activities such as grooming, defecat-
ing and urinating have no playful counterparts. Play, it has been
suggested, may increase the individuals knowledge of its home
range. It may make an individual more resistant to stress, or
enlarge its behavioural repertoire, making it more flexible and
better able to adjust to new conditions. Or, as we suggest here,
play can help to generate creative solutions to challenges. We
examine the main hypotheses about the functions of play in a
little more detail before considering how they might be tested.
Most theories about the functions of play have focused on its
role in enabling the developing individual to acquire and practise
complex physical skills and, by so doing, fine-tune neuromuscu-
lar systems. Other theories, reflecting how young animals play
with each other, have emphasised how the individual develops
social skills and cements its social relationships in the course of
play, or improves its capacity to compete and cooperate with
other members of its own species (Bekoff, 1976; Geist, 1978).
Given the energetic character of play in animals, many
writers have supposed that it provides physical exercise that
facilitates the development of adult musculature. This was the
view of Groos (1898), who was one of the first to write about the
subject. Brownlee (1954), who studied cattle, suggested that
play exercises the muscles used in escape, fighting and repro-
duction later in life, while Robert Fagen (1981) proposed, among
other things, that the activities involved in energetic play would
also train the young animal to improve its physical balance.
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Many hypotheses 31

Active engagement with the environment is likely to bring

other less obvious benefits, because objects are literally exam-
ined from different viewpoints while playing  and objects in
the real world rarely look the same from different angles
(Bateson, 2000b). Once experienced, such objects are more
easily recognised whichever way they are seen. Playing with
them is likely to help the individual to construct a working
knowledge of the environment: identifying objects, under-
standing causal relationships, and discovering that things are
found when stones are turned over and the world is rearranged.
Yet another hypothesis is that young animals benefit from
familiarising themselves with the topography of their local
terrain as a result of playing in it (Stamps, 1995). Simply know-
ing the locations of important physical features will usually
help, although it will not guarantee safe passage around
obstacles when escaping from predators or chasing prey. The
seemingly playful movements ensure that, when things
become serious, the animal will be better able to negotiate,
efficiently and automatically, the obstacles that clutter its famil-
iar environment. As it does so, it will be able to monitor the
positions of predators, prey or potentially hostile members of
its own species.
Play has features that make it suitable for finding the best
way forward in a world of conflicting demands. In acquiring
cognitive skills, individuals are in danger of finding suboptimal
solutions to the many problems that confront them. In deliber-
ately moving away from what might look like the metaphorical
final resting point, each individual may end up somewhere
better. Play may therefore fulfil a probing role that enables the
individual to escape from false endpoints, or local optima
(Bateson, 2011). An analogy is a mountain surrounded by lesser
peaks. A climber might get to the top of a lesser peak only to
discover that they must descend again before scaling a higher
one. When stuck on a metaphorical lower peak, it can be bene-
ficial to have active mechanisms for getting off it and onto a
higher one. In practice this means that play is an evolved mech-
anism for uncovering possibilities that are better than those
obtained without playing. We discuss in Chapter 10 how the
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32 The functions of play

random thought associations that occur in dreaming, or in

altered states of consciousness invoked by some psychoactive
drugs, may serve a similar end of generating new, and occasion-
ally better, outcomes.
Yet another function of play may be to prepare for the
unexpected. A kitten playing with a ball pats it between chair
legs, under sofas and so forth, seemingly making the job of
controlling the ball more difficult for itself  an aspect of play
known as self-handicapping. Spinka, Newberry and Bekoff
(2001) speculated that this type of experience, in which the
player deliberately creates obstacles and surprises for itself,
provides training for awkward and unexpected situations in
adulthood. They also suggest that play might enhance the abil-
ity of animals to cope emotionally with the unexpected. When
animals play they might rehearse behavioural sequences in
which they lose full control over their locomotion and need to
recover quickly. Playing provides them with experience of
rarely occurring movements, such as might happen when an
animal is fleeing from a predator and must regain forward
motion after swerving awkwardly.
Self-handicapping during social play involves a bigger,
stronger individual restraining itself when playing with a
smaller, weaker playmate. The self-handicapping is not always
completely symmetrical. In a study of adolescent and adult
dogs, higher-ranking and older dogs generally showed a higher
proportion of attacks and pursuits, and a lower proportion of
self-handicapping, than lower-ranking and younger play part-
ners (Bauer & Smuts, 2007). This may be a case where play
becomes serious and the stronger dog exerts its authority.
Theories about play leading to the acquisition of knowl-
edge and resilience, with long-term benefits, are distinct from
the idea of play as a mechanism for generating novel and crea-
tive solutions, which is the primary thrust of this book. The
suggestion that versatility, flexibility and creativity in adult-
hood are causally linked to play earlier in life has a long history
going back at least as far as Herbert Spencer (1872). Fedigan
(1972) suggested that the animal puts out as many tests or
probes of the environment as possible, to innovate. Similarly,
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Testing hypotheses about function 33

Fagen (1974) wrote that: Playful recombination of motor pat-

terns and responses into new sequences could, like rearrange-
ment of genetic material, tend to increase the phenotypic
variability of an animals offspring. It is important to distin-
guish, as these authors have done, between gaining flexibility,
becoming more adaptable, and rearranging actions or thoughts
to create novel solutions  a potential mechanism behind crea-
tivity and innovation. Flexibility and versatility are about being
able to deploy a variety of different responses, and adaptability
is about being able to deploy an appropriate response to a
challenge, whereas creativity is about generating novel behav-
iour that might provide a new solution.
Many theories suggest, then, that the experience, skills,
problem-solving abilities and knowledge needed for serious pur-
poses later in life are actively acquired or enhanced through
playful engagement with the environment, including other mem-
bers of the species. In this sense, some forms of play may be
regarded as a metaphorical developmental scaffolding used to
construct adult behaviour (Bateson, 1981). Like the scaffolding
used to erect a building, play behaviour disappears from the
adult repertoire once the job of assembling the components of
adult behaviour is complete. The scaffolding analogy is clearly
imperfect, since many adults continue to play, albeit at lower
rates than young animals, although  as any athlete or musician
knows  continued practice is essential to maintain their skills.
Moreover, the scaffolding analogy does not adequately describe
some of the other proposed functions of play, particularly its
impact on creativity. If play has many different potential func-
tions, as we believe it does, then the plethora of explanations is
hardly surprising.

testing hypotheses about function

Distinguishing between the many different hypotheses about

the biological functions of play is difficult because the pre-
sumed benefits are usually thought to be delayed, appearing
later in the individuals lifetime. The utility to an individual
of a characteristic that enhances its chances of surviving
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34 The functions of play

and reproducing is testable in principle, but is seldom tested

in practice.
Solid evidence for the biological benefits of play has not
been readily forthcoming. Martin and Caro (1985) were critical
of the assumption that play must necessarily be highly benefi-
cial. They examined three types of evidence: correlations
between play and beneficial outcomes; effects of experimental
enhancement or deprivation of play experience; and arguments
from optimal design about whether the observed features of
play are consistent with its proposed function. At the time they
were writing, none of these strands was backed up by convinc-
ing evidence that play actually provided tangible benefits or
increased the chances of survival or reproductive success.
Martin and Caro (1985) suggested two reasons for the paucity
of examples (beyond the obvious reason that relatively few
studies had then been carried out). One possible reason was
that play in fact had no major benefits. Another possible explan-
ation used the systems theory concept of equifinality, or reach-
ing the same endpoint by different routes. The idea here is that
an individual deprived of play would find other ways of obtain-
ing the beneficial experience. The mechanisms involved in
behavioural development do tend to be redundant, so that if
an endpoint is not achieved by one route it may be achievable by
another (Bateson & Martin, 1999). Playing when young may be
one way to acquire knowledge and skills, but not the only way.
The individual might, for example, delay acquisition of these
skills until it is adult. However, when such experience is gath-
ered without play, the process may be more costly and difficult,
even if it is not impossible.
Since Martin and Caro wrote their review three decades
ago, the picture has changed. First, studies of animals in their
natural habitat have found that the biological costs of play can
be very considerable, implying that play must have compensa-
tory benefits or it would not have evolved. Second, individuals
that play more have in some cases been found to be more likely
to survive.
Before considering this more recent empirical evidence, it
is worth noting that Martin and Caros critical analysis caused
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Testing hypotheses about function 35

considerable rethinking about the function of play. Indeed,

Brian Sutton-Smith (1997) was impressed by the uncertainty
and ambivalence among the principal theorists on animal play
and noted the immense empirical as well as theoretical ambi-
guity that surrounded the study of play. He asked: Is it not
possible to think of the adaptive function of play as being
intrinsic and independent of its usefulness for other more
extrinsic forms of survival? We agree that it is possible to
think about the features of play as being independent of their
utility, but not their adaptive function, which can be determined
only in terms of survival and reproductive success.
Play has real biological costs for the player. Animals
expend more energy and expose themselves to a greater risk
of injury and predation when they are playing than when they
are resting. Play also makes them more conspicuous and less
vigilant. For example, young Southern fur seals are more likely
to be killed by sea lions when they are playing in the sea than at
other times when they are in the sea (Harcourt, 1991b). Such
enhanced risks of predation may explain why golden tamarin
parents are more vigilant when their offspring are playing (de
Oliveira et al., 2003).
Tim Caro (1995) has documented the risks to wild-living
cheetah cubs when they are playing, including the opportu-
nity costs of not doing other things, injury, becoming separa-
ted from their mother, and disruption of the mothers
hunting. The play behaviour of cubs that had left the den
was never observed to result in long-term injury or separation.
One of us, when observing cheetahs with Tim Caro in the
Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, watched a mother stalk-
ing a gazelle. Caro, who was a very experienced cheetah
watcher, whispered: That gazelle has only two more minutes
to live. At that point the mothers playful cubs rushed up, the
gazelle fled and the hunt was ruined. Here, then, was one
example of play exerting real costs by interfering with the
important business of obtaining food. Caro rarely saw this
happen: in 478 failed hunts, he saw only 7 disrupted in this
way. But when it did happen, the cost to the cubs of losing a
meal could be significant.
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36 The functions of play

If play is beneficial, as the evidence suggests it must be,

then it follows that depriving the developing individual of
opportunities for play should have harmful effects on the out-
come of its development, other things being equal. Other things
rarely are equal, however, and depriving an animal or child of
play may also deprive it of other crucial experiences necessary
for normal development. Moreover, the individual may acquire
the experience in other ways besides playing. Studying such
effects experimentally can therefore lead to inconclusive
results, as was found in an early study of play experience in
domestic kittens (Caro, 1980). Eleven kittens between 4 and
12 weeks old were repeatedly given the opportunity to play
with toys. The kittens were given a total of 34 exposures to the
toys, each lasting 3040 minutes. These kittens were reared
with their mothers and littermates and had unlimited opportu-
nities for social play. Eight control kittens were similarly reared
with their mothers and littermates but received no opportuni-
ties to play with toys. All the kittens were individually tested on
their ability to catch and kill four different types of live prey
when they were 6 months old. No clear-cut differences were
found between the two groups. Caro recognised the difficulty of
interpreting negative evidence and accepted that his results
might be explained in a variety of ways. The control kittens
might have received enough relevant experience playing with
their littermates, or they had been able to play with unintended
toys in their pens, such as wood-shavings. Or perhaps the exper-
imental groups experience of playing with toys was irrelevant
to prey-catching. Or the measures of prey-catching that Caro
used, combined with the small sample sizes, might not have
been sufficiently sensitive to detect subtle differences in skill
that could nonetheless be important in the real world.
Negative evidence continued to accumulate elsewhere. In
field studies of wild meerkats, the amount of play by the young
did not affect subsequent fighting success in 76 individuals
from 14 groups (Sharpe, 2005a), nor enhance social cohesion
in 55 individuals from 7 groups (Sharpe, 2005b), nor affect
subsequent partnerships formed when meerkats disperse
from the natal group (Sharpe, 2005c). As Lynda Sharpe pointed
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Testing hypotheses about function 37

out, her evidence did cast doubt on some of the favourite

explanations for play. Perhaps she did not measure the right
outcome variables. Or perhaps even those individuals who
played less still played enough to secure a long-term benefit
and, once a given threshold was exceeded, further play did not
add value or affect other aspects of adult behaviour. The diffi-
culty with negative findings is that the absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence.
Some studies, however, have found measurable conse-
quences of manipulating animals play experience. In one
such study, play interactions between rats enhanced their sub-
sequent ability to respond to novel situations (Einon & Morgan,
1976). In a later experiment, rats were reared from 20 to 50 days
after birth in one of three conditions: in pairs; or in isolation,
with or without the opportunity to receive up to an hour of
social play each day (Einon & Potegal, 1991). The young rats
were rehoused in small groups at 50 days of age, when the
frequency of play normally starts to wane, so that they were
not socially isolated at the time of testing. They were then tested
for how they responded defensively at 80100 days old when
placed into the home cage of another adult. (Adults usually
respond aggressively to an intruder.) The play-deprived animals
spent significantly more time immobile after they had been
attacked than did animals of the two groups that had not been
deprived of play experience. The increased immobility associ-
ated with play deprivation was not caused by baseline differ-
ences in emotionality, such as those elicited by a novel
environment or by the presence of a strange animal, or by
non-social aversive stimuli. These experiments suggest that
the play-deprived rats immobility was restricted to situations
involving pain coupled with close proximity to, and contact
with, another rat. Since no other differences in defensive behav-
iour were observed, the maladaptive effect of play deprivation
would seem to be specific. Sergio and Vivien Pellis (2009) sug-
gested that play helps rats to refine the ability to deal with
potentially threatening and stressful situations. Even so, the
play-deprived rats may have suffered from some other, unin-
tended form of deprivation that led to their subsequent
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38 The functions of play

behavioural abnormalities. If being deprived of play in early life

does indeed adversely affect the individuals capacity to cope in
a competitive world, depriving children of opportunities for
play-fighting may have unintended consequences. Through
playing in this way, children may learn how to cope with their
own and other peoples aggression and violence (see Chapter 8).
Another approach to identifying the biological functions
of play relies on uncovering correlations between the behaviour
of young animals and their subsequent survival and reproduc-
tive success in the natural environment. In one such study,
Fagen and Fagen (2004) tracked the play behaviour and longer-
term survival of the offspring of 11 families of individually
identified, free-ranging brown bears in Alaska. The results
showed that cubs who had played more during their first sum-
mer survived better from the first summer to the end of their
second summer. This apparent link between play and survival
could have arisen for a variety of reasons, so the Fagens ana-
lysed potential confounding factors: the cubs condition, pre-
natal and first-year availability of salmon (an important food
resource for bears), and maternal characteristics. Controlling
statistically for these factors, they confirmed that the more the
bears had played when they were cubs, the more likely they
were to survive to their first year.
In a subsequent study, Fagen and Fagen (2009) found that
this association between the amount of play and subsequent
survival persisted into later years of the bears lives when they
reached independence. The amount of play accounted for 35%
of the variance in survival. Just how play benefited the bear cubs
could not be determined from the data. However, the Fagens
suggested that much pre-adult mortality might result from
events occurring during the stressful environmental conditions
of winter hibernation and early spring. Resistance to cold expo-
sure and infectious disease might be involved. It is possible that
play helps to produce an individual who is more resilient, both
behaviourally and immunologically. If so, the individual would
be better able to withstand stress in ways that its observable
physical condition alone would not predict. In other popula-
tions or species, these same factors could still be important but
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Alternative tactics 39

in different ways; for example, in mediating the development

and performance of behaviour patterns involving predator
avoidance and defence, which necessarily involve cognition
and emotion.
Further evidence that play can improve an individuals
subsequent chances of survival came from a study of feral
horses (Cameron et al., 2008). The important finding of this
study was that those individuals who played more when
young survived better and had better body condition as year-
lings. In both studies of free-living bears and horses, it remains
possible that some unknown third variable might have pro-
duced the observed links between play and survival. The indi-
viduals that played less may have been less healthy from the
outset in ways that were not observable. Nevertheless, the
results do lend support to the view that playing when young
produces benefits later in life.

alternative tactics

While the energy costs of play may not be great (Martin, 1984b),
an animal that is short of food makes energy savings when it
can do so and gives relatively low priority to play (Martin &
Caro, 1985). We noted in Chapter 2 that play is especially
susceptible to poor health or poor nutrition  indeed, its sensi-
tivity to prevailing conditions is one of its defining features.
Animals and children generally do not play when they are ill,
hungry or stressed. How, then, can the increased object play of
early-weaned cats and rats, described in Chapter 2, be explained
in terms of increasing the animals chances of surviving and
reproducing?
If cues from the mother indicate that the family will break
up earlier, because the mother cannot sustain her investment in
caring for her offspring, the young animal would benefit by
boosting its play experience while it is still able to do so in a
safe environment (Bateson & Young, 1981). Enforced independ-
ence at an earlier age would mean the young animal would have
to start hunting for its own food at an age when it could otherwise
have been honing its predatory skills by playing. To mitigate
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40 The functions of play

these ill-effects of curtailing play, the early-weaned young might

play more while they still had the opportunity to do so, compared
with offspring that were on track to be weaned later. Such a
conditional response, if it happens, would imply that those indi-
viduals who played more in response to being weaned earlier
were more likely to survive than those that did not.
In an attempt to test this hypothesis, the development of
predatory behaviour was studied in kittens that had experi-
enced early, normal or late weaning (Tan & Counsilman,
1985). Early weaning was simulated by gradual separation
from the mother starting at 4 weeks after birth, while late-
weaned kittens were left with their mothers and were denied
access to solid food until the ninth week. The results showed
that early-weaned kittens developed predatory behaviour
sooner than normally and late-weaned kittens and were more
likely to become mouse-killers at an early age, even though they
were given plenty of food. The functional significance of such a
conditional response needs to be examined under natural con-
ditions to confirm that it is real. Even so, it seems likely that by
responding to cues from its mother, an individual is able to
move along a developmental route that is appropriate to the
conditions it is likely to encounter in later life. Early weaning by
the mother may indicate that environmental conditions are
poor and the kitten therefore needs to gather experience by
playing in a protected environment while it is still able to do so.
More generally, an adaptive response by the offspring to
the nutritional state of its mother has been a major feature of
the scientific literature on the developmental origins of human
health and disease (e.g. Bateson et al., 2004; Gluckman &
Hanson, 2006). An individual who responds appropriately to
its mothers current condition fares better than one that does
not, so long as environmental conditions do not change. If,
however, its characteristics no longer match the environment
it eventually encounters, then its chances of survival are likely
to be reduced. Usually the individual benefits by adjusting the
trajectory of its development so that its phenotype is best
matched to the anticipated environment. The alternative
pathways that lead to different developmental patterns of play
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Conclusions 41

in cats, depending on when they were weaned, may be one

example of a more general phenomenon.

conclusions

Attempts to demonstrate that any one of the many plausible

explanations for the functions of play is correct have proved
extraordinarily difficult, despite much thought and effort.
Nevertheless, recent evidence does suggest that animals that
play more when young are more likely to survive in the natural
environment. Given the wide variety of forms of play, it may
well be that many or most of the postulated benefits of play
are real.
Our aim is to examine how play and playfulness may
enhance creativity and innovation in humans. The survival
and reproductive success of individuals may not be the most
pressing issues in the daily lives of affluent people in techno-
logically advanced societies. But creativity and innovation
clearly do matter, both now and in the past. The creative ability
to find novel solutions could have made a big difference to the
ancestors of present-day humans in terms of surviving and
reproducing. In the present context, the survival of business
organisations that depend on innovation for their success
could be affected by how much they encourage playfulness,
and hence creativity, in their employees. This is a topic to
which we return in Chapter 7.
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4
Evolution and play

This final chapter on biological aspects of play forms a

further backdrop to our investigation into the links between
play, playfulness, creativity and innovation. No serious biolo-
gist disputes that organisms have changed over geological time
or that they continue to change, such as when insects acquire
resistance to pesticides or bacteria acquire resistance to anti-
biotics. Other organisms have become extinct, many of them in
the last decade. What requires explanation is the way in which
these evolutionary changes take place. Darwin observed that
since members of a species differ from each other, some are
more likely to survive and reproduce than others. If the charac-
teristics of these individuals were inherited by their offspring,
the descendants would be better adapted to their environment
than individuals that did not have those characteristics. So,
by the process he termed natural selection, lineages would
evolve. What then can be said about the evolution of play and
playfulness?

surplus energy

In writing about the biology of art, Desmond Morris (1962) sug-

gested that artistic expression became possible when animals
had evolved to the point where they had enough surplus energy
to engage in it. Gordon Burghardt (2005) developed this idea in
relation to play. He suggested that four main factors might have
been necessary for the evolution of play.

42
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One benefit leading to others 43

1. The animals had sufficient metabolic energy to engage in the

sustained vigorous activity that typifies play.
2. They were buffered against serious stress and food shortages.
3. They needed to be sufficiently aroused to use the surplus energy
in play.
4. The animals were likely to benefit from the experience obtained
through play.

As noted earlier, birds and mammals provide the most striking

examples of play. What is special about these animals compared
with, say, fish or reptiles? Mammals and birds are warm-blooded,
and parental care of the young is generally extended. A necessary
condition for the evolution of play might therefore have been
a protected period in the life cycle when an individual could
safely engage in such activity  which comes back to a core
feature of play, namely that it occurs in a protected context.
The longer the period of pre-adult development, the greater the
opportunity to benefit from play and the more complex the
resulting behaviour. That at least is the hypothesis. We shall
consider how such ideas might be tested.

one benefit leading to others

Once they had evolved, various aspects of play could have con-
ferred different benefits. As outlined in the previous chapter,
some aspects of play in some species are probably concerned
with honing the nervous system and musculature, some with
developing social skills, some with perfecting predatory skills,
and so on. From our standpoint, however, the most interesting
proposal is that play may have opened up new possibilities  in
other words, that it was a source of creativity beneficial to
the individual by enabling it to discover new ways of dealing
with an ever-changing environment. If this is correct, then
older animals should be better able to solve problems set by
the environment (or by scientists). Some evidence in line with
this prediction came from a study in which novel foraging tasks
were presented to family groups of callitrichid monkeys in zoos.
Older monkeys were significantly more likely than younger
monkeys to be the first to solve the tasks (Kendall, Coe &
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44 Evolution and play

Laland, 2005). For animals living in social groups, an additional

advantage could have been that some individuals could acquire
skills or new ways of doing things by copying other individuals
who had already discovered them through play.
Discovering a new form of behaviour through play is a
type of creativity. Another type of creativity is applying existing
forms of behaviour in new ways. The natural world provides
potential examples. When describing the novel capacity of
certain birds to open the foil tops of milk bottles left outside
houses, Hinde and Fisher (1951) suggested that the birds
deployed motor patterns that were normally used in other
circumstances; in this case to search for food by tearing at the
bark of trees. Hinde and Fisher argued that tearing at bark was a
motor pattern that had evolved through Darwinian selection
and, when used to tear open the tops of milk bottles, did not
require invention by the pioneering individuals. This would
explain why other birds were able to copy the bottle-opening
pioneers so quickly. However, redeploying the existing motor
pattern from trees to bottle tops was itself creative and became
a successful innovation, resembling what we suggest may hap-
pen through certain forms of play.
More generally, play was clearly not the only way for young
animals to learn to recognise members of their social group,
acquire knowledge of local culture, or become accustomed
to their local environment. Animals are patently able to
acquire these and other forms of experience without playing.
Nevertheless, such outcomes might still have been beneficial
consequences of play after it had evolved. They may not have
been central to the evolution of play but, once it had evolved,
the additional benefits were a bonus. The young animal was
able, with no extra cost, to acquire information or hone skills
in the course of playing for other reasons, such as practising
skills needed in adult life. Gordon Burghardt (2005) postulated a
process by which simpler forms of play with restricted benefits
could lead, in the course of evolution, to more complex play
with more extended benefits. The precursors of play might have
been spin-offs from other activities and were then co-opted for
one of the proposed benefits of play. As evolution proceeded,
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Testing evolutionary theories of play 45

and play became more complicated, the benefits may have multi-
plied. On this argument, most or all of the suggested current
benefits of play might turn out to be real. The experience, skills
and knowledge needed for serious purposes later in life may
all be acquired actively through playful engagement with the
environment, including interactions with other members of the
species. An important feature of this scheme for our thesis is
that the final stage in the evolutionary process produced cogni-
tive resources for generating novel behaviour and creativity.
Creativity is about breaking away from established patterns.
Creative people perceive new relations between thoughts, or
things, or forms of expression that would normally seem utterly
different. They are able to combine them into new forms, con-
necting the seemingly unconnected. Play is also about breaking
away from established patterns and combining actions or
thoughts in new ways. Play is an effective mechanism, therefore,
for encouraging creativity and hence facilitating innovation.
Playfully rearranging disparate ideas into novel combinations is
a powerful means of gaining new insights and opening up possi-
bilities that had not previously been recognised. It involves doing
novel things or having novel ideas without regard to whether
they may be justified by a specified pay-off. In subsequent chap-
ters we shall explore these aspects in greater detail.

testing evolutionary theories of play

How can theories about the evolution of play be tested?

Historical explanations are by their very nature difficult to test.
Direct observation is impossible in the case of past behaviour,
but multiple lines of inference can provide the basis for robust
conclusions. For example, inferences drawn from comparisons
between different populations of the same species, or between
different taxonomic groups, can be compelling.
Modern comparative biology provides the tools for analy-
sing the degree of difference between taxonomic groups, with
the aim of revealing their evolutionary relatedness and when
the lineages diverged in the past. Such comparisons may also
reveal whether or not the phenotypic similarities are due to
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46 Evolution and play

evolutionary convergence, where a common problem set by

the environment has been solved independently in analogous
ways by unrelated lineages. In particular, our increasing under-
standing of molecular architecture and the potential to read
molecular history in genomic sequences, and indeed to recover
DNA from fossils, allow for an improved understanding of what
might have happened in the past. For example, DNA sequencing
of large components of the Neanderthal genome suggests
that some interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and
the ancestors of modern humans (Green et al., 2010). As a
result, some people now contain within their genomes a small
Neanderthal component. This example illustrates how deduc-
tions may be drawn from current evidence about past behav-
iour; namely that individuals of these two lineages mated with
each other.
Many well-documented instances exist of where similar-
ities in structure, behaviour or genome reflect common evolu-
tionary origins. Examples include the relationship between
the gill arches of fish and the vascular anatomy of the thorax
and neck of primates; and the relationship between the bony
structure of fins in whales and the limbs of other mammals.
Conversely, while the cephalopod eye and the vertebrate eye
show remarkable similarities in form, their independent evolu-
tionary origin is demonstrated by the different anatomical
relationships between neural innervations of the retina and
the light-sensitive cells (Fernald, 2000). In vertebrates, the inner-
vations are from the front of the eye, requiring the optic nerve
to pass through the retina and thereby creating a blind spot.
In cephalopods, however, the optic nerve runs from the back
of the retina and no blind spot is created. We can conclude in
this case that the two superficially similar structures evolved
separately.
Can similar comparative approaches be used to under-
stand the evolution of play? Where an environmental challenge
required greater processing capacity by the brain, this organ
would be expected to evolve with greater rapidity. On the sim-
plifying assumption that a bigger brain enables greater learning
capacity, the rate of evolution of a species should correlate
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Testing evolutionary theories of play 47

positively with its relative brain size. This hypothesis was given
some support by a study suggesting that the taxonomic groups
that are evolving most rapidly, such as birds and primates, also
have the biggest brain relative to body size (Wyles, Kunkel &
Wilson, 1983). The conjecture is that behaviour expressed by
animals with large and complex brains facilitated their rapid
evolution.
The hypothesis that large brains permit faster evolution is
further supported by the observed correlation between brain
size and behavioural innovation in birds. In a groundbreaking
piece of research, Lefebvre and colleagues (1997) analysed 322
published reports of innovative ways in which birds obtain
food. The taxonomic orders of the birds were related to stand-
ardised measures of relative brain size and a strong correlation
was found between the relative size of the forebrain and the
frequency of occurrence of novel feeding methods. In one exam-
ple among many, a herring gull caught small rabbits and killed
them by dropping them on rocks or into the sea, where the
rabbits drowned. In another case, a crow was observed to place
palm nuts in the path of cars, which crushed the nuts, enabling
the crow to eat their contents. More recent research on birds
has shown that the species with the biggest forebrains relative
to other parts of the brain are also the most successful in invad-
ing new habitats (Sol et al., 2005). The innovative species also
tend to live longer.8
The use of tools has been frequently observed in birds and
mammals. Members of the crow family and parrot family pro-
vide striking examples. The forebrains of these birds are large.
Relative to their body size, the brain size of parrots is similar to
that of chimpanzees. In primates, a clear relationship has been
found between the relative size of executive parts of the brain
(the neocortex and striatum) and the use of tools (Reader &
Laland, 2002). A comparative analysis of 533 instances of inno-
vation, 445 observations of social learning, and 607 episodes
of tool use showed that social learning, innovation and tool use
were positively correlated with species relative and absolute
executive brain volumes. The study controlled carefully for
other factors and strongly suggested that the ability to learn
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48 Evolution and play

from others, invent new forms of behaviour and use tools

played pivotal roles in primate brain evolution.
These associations between brain size and innovation are
relevant to understanding how play evolved and, in particular,
its role in creativity and innovation. If play is found in widely
separated taxonomic groups (which it is), then it follows that
play has either evolved many times or has its origins early in
evolutionary history. In order to distinguish between these
possibilities Reader, Hager and Laland (2011) analysed ecologi-
cally relevant cognitive measures from reported instances of
behavioural innovation, social learning, tool use, extractive
foraging and tactical deception in 62 primate species. The meas-
ures were highly intercorrelated, suggesting that social, tech-
nological and ecological abilities have coevolved in primates.
Reader et al. (2011) concluded that high general intelligence
has independently evolved at least four times in primates,
with convergent evolution in capuchins, baboons, macaques
and great apes (of which humans are one example).
If play leads to creativity, and if more creative individuals
are more likely to survive and reproduce, then the necessary
conditions for evolution are satisfied.9 The most creative indi-
viduals would on average have more offspring. Some suggestive
data from humans show that the most creative poets and artists
do tend to have more sexual partners (Nettle & Clegg, 2006).
Of course, the number of sexual partners does not translate
simply into reproductive success in a modern context, but it
might have done so before the age of easy contraception.

play and ecology

One of the least well-explored avenues of play research is

the relationship of play to the ecological conditions in which
animals live. Several authors have proposed that generalist
species  those living in a variety of habitats and capable of
eating many different types of food  are more likely to benefit
from play than specialist species occupying limited ecological
niches (Burghardt, 2005). The premise is that the costs of play
will outweigh the benefits for the specialists. However, this
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Impact of play on evolution 49

argument presupposes that the specialist species have no need

of the other benefits of play, such as its effects on social rela-
tions or the ability to evade predators.
Analysis of the relationship between play and other life-
history characteristics is hampered by limited data about which
species play (Burghardt, 2005). The difficulty is that knowledge
of play in a given taxonomic group is often limited.10 Gordon
Burghardt (2013) and his colleagues are developing ways for
testing whether the presence of a particular character increases
the chance of evolving another character  for example,
whether a feature of a species that generates abundant surplus
resources leads to an increased incidence of play behaviour.
They have carried out preliminary analyses looking at the occur-
rence of social play in adult primates, including humans. Their
analyses suggest that primates that eat leaves rather than fruits
are less likely to engage in social play. This is consistent with the
expectations of surplus resource theory, as fruit-eating species
should have more surplus resources to use in play.11
The trade-off between the benefits of play and its biolo-
gical costs may explain some of the individual variation found
in quantitative studies of play. Some individuals may be more
creative than others, whereas others (the innovators) may be
better able to exploit the creativity of their fellows in the social
group. The distinction we have drawn between creativity and
innovation is relevant here. The balance between two types
of individuals, creatives and innovators, might be evolutio-
narily stable. We know of no evidence that would support
such a hypothesis, but it should be open to theoretical simula-
tion and empirical testing.

impact of play on evolution

Before leaving the topic of evolution, we consider how play

might have affected the behaviour of the descendants of the
playing individuals and hence the course of evolution. How
could this happen? The nineteenth-century architect of evolu-
tionary theory, Charles Darwin, knew nothing of the molecular
processes of inheritance. In this respect he was no different
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50 Evolution and play

from his contemporaries. He was sometimes tempted into

supposing that acquired characters could be inherited. In the
mid twentieth century, the genetic mode of inheritance was
brought together with Darwins evolutionary theory in what
was called at the time the Modern Synthesis. This conceptual
framework became the dominant mode of biological thought,
emphatically reinforced by the culture of genetic determinism
that has accompanied the explosion of genomic knowledge.
Evolutionary theory itself continues to evolve, integrating
the views of the Modern Synthesis with the explosion of obser-
vation and theory coming from the developmental, ecological
and molecular sciences (Pigliucci & Mller, 2010). Other mech-
anisms of inheritance have been discovered. These include the
transmission across generations of symbiotic bacteria (Gilbert,
2005), direct epigenetic effects involving the passing on of
activated and silenced genes to offspring, indirect epigenetic
effects such as those transmitted through the mothers beha-
viour, and social learning (Jablonka & Raz, 2009). A different
line of research has focused on synthesising theories of develop-
ment and those of evolution  the evolutionary developmental
biology movement or evodevo (Amundson, 2005). Aspects
of development may involve particular mechanisms that have
a fundamental role in the growth of the organism. These
developmental tool-kits, such as repeating the same basic pat-
tern of expression in separate segments of the body, are thought
to affect evolvability. With developmental tool-kits such as seg-
mentation, evolutionary change can be greatly accelerated.
Darwinian evolutionary theory conventionally proposes that
evolutionary changes involve a slow accretion through the selec-
tion of spontaneously expressed phenotypic elements under-
pinned by random mutation. However, Darwin also believed that
when individual animals learned to perform an activity, genera-
tion after generation, the behaviour would eventually be expressed
without the necessity for individual learning. He did not explain
how such a process might work. The first plausible evolutionary
explanation was proposed by Douglas Spalding (1873).12
Spaldings mechanism comprised a sequence of learned
behaviour patterns followed by the differential survival of
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Impact of play on evolution 51

those individuals that expressed the behaviour more efficiently

without learning. To give one example, Galapagos woodpecker
finches use cactus spines or small sticks to probe into holes for
insect larvae. This behaviour could have been learned initially
in the species history through trial and error. But subsequently,
in the course of evolution, the behaviour of picking up and
probing with small sticks could have been expressed spontane-
ously, because those individuals that did so expended less
time and effort than those that continued to learn the beha-
viour again in each generation. The birds that came to express
the behaviour spontaneously were therefore more likely to
survive and reproduce than those relying on individual learn-
ing. Spaldings idea was advanced again by James Mark Baldwin
(1896), Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1896) and Henry F. Osborn (1896),
all publishing in the same year. Seemingly their ideas were
proposed independently of Spalding and, indeed, of each
other, although they may have unconsciously assimilated what
Spalding had written 23 years before. To avoid confusion about
terminology and precedence, Bateson (2006) has suggested that
the proposed process be described by a descriptive term: the
adaptability driver.
Lloyd Morgans (1896) account of the adaptability driver
was particularly clear. He suggested that if a group of organisms
respond adaptively to a change in environmental conditions,
the modification will recur generation after generation under
the changed conditions, but the modification will not be genet-
ically inherited. However, any genetic variation in the ease
of expression of the modified characteristic is liable to favour
those individuals that express it most readily. Consequently, an
inherited predisposition to express the modification will tend
to evolve. The longer the evolutionary process continues, the
more marked will be such a predisposition. The process starts
through learning or some other form of plastic modification
within individuals, but this paves the way for a longer-term
change in the genes. The Galapagos woodpecker finch that
pokes small sticks into holes for insect larvae appears to have
a strong predisposition to pick up sticks, but learns from others
what to do with those sticks (Tebbich, Sterelny & Teschke,
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52 Evolution and play

2010). Eventually the spontaneously expressed behaviour of

picking up sticks may be accompanied by the spontaneously
expressed behaviour of poking those sticks into holes.13
In principle, then, behaviour patterns that were initially
acquired by learning could be expressed spontaneously, with-
out learning, in subsequent generations. In a computer simula-
tion, Hinton and Nowlan (1987) demonstrated how learning
could greatly accelerate rates of evolution. As they put it: with-
out learning, solving difficult problems is like searching for a
needle in a haystack. Learning tells the evolving organisms,
metaphorically speaking, that they are getting close to the
needle, thereby allowing appropriate genetic change to occur.
This work led to a considerable growth in computer simulations
investigating whether learned behaviour could lead to sponta-
neous expression of the same behaviour in subsequent gener-
ations. The results have been contradictory, with some of the
theoretical analyses suggesting that learning could accelerate
evolution and some suggesting that it could have the opposite
effect. Paenke, Kawecki and Sendhoff (2009) proposed a general
framework that explained both effects. Spontaneously express-
ing a behaviour that had been learned in previous generations
could be costly if it meant that the animal lost all of its ability
to learn. The great evolutionary biologist George Gaylord
Simpson (1953) believed that this cost was a fundamental objec-
tion to the proposed role of behaviour in evolution. Some evi-
dence from fruit flies suggests that he might have been right, at
least about simpler organisms (Kawecki, 2010). The benefit of
expressing a behaviour spontaneously was found to be out-
weighed by the cost of losing the capacity to learn about other
things. However, Simpsons point is much less cogent when
applied to large-brained animals like birds and mammals,
with multiple parallel pathways involved in learning. In these
animals, the loss of capacity to learn in one way has no effect on
the capacity to learn in other ways (Bateson, 2004). This means
that the spontaneous expression of behaviour learned in the
course of play in previous generations need have no effect in
the current generation on the acquisition through play of new
experiences.
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Impact of play on evolution 53

An ability to cope with complex environmental challenges

through learning opens up ecological niches previously unavail-
able to the animal: a point eloquently expressed by Avital and
Jablonka (2000). They suggested that animals use their plasticity
to stretch their behavioural repertoire, and the new behavioural
elements are then assimilated genetically in subsequent genera-
tions. The exposure to novel environments would inevitably lead
to the subsequent evolution by means of classical Darwinian
processes of morphological, physiological and biochemical adap-
tations to those niches.
Play leads to a form of plasticity, since by playing an indi-
vidual is able to acquire skills and understanding of its physical
and social environment. Those aspects of play that are creative in
solving a problem, or breaking out of local optima, are beneficial
to the individual. Such improvements in what could be per-
ceived as cognitive ability would not occur readily by genetic
recombination or random mutation, since the probability of all
the necessary changes occurring simultaneously would be small.
For instance, a squirrel might have discovered while playing that
swinging on a branch enabled it to reach nuts that were previ-
ously inaccessible, but this beneficial change in its behaviour
remains a learned modification. Similarly, dolphins playfully
blowing bubbles might have learned that a curtain of bubbles
can trap fish. The next step could occur in one of two ways. The
discovery made through play by one individual could then
spread by social learning. Alternatively, the discovery could
have been made separately by many individuals through play,
all of them benefiting in the same way. Then, as was postulated
in the adaptability driver hypothesis, those individuals that
were able to express spontaneously the beneficial trait (swinging
on branches, blowing bubbles, or whatever) were able to com-
pete more successfully. To summarise, the suggested chain of
events in the course of evolution is as follows:
1. Each element in a sequence of behaviour is learned by
individuals.
2. Later in evolution, one behavioural element is expressed
spontaneously without the need for learning.
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54 Evolution and play

3. Subsequently in evolution, other elements are expressed

spontaneously.
4. Eventually the complete sequence of behaviour is expressed
spontaneously.
5. Once the saving of time and energy costs involved in learning has
occurred, the animal is able more rapidly to build up an
increasingly complex repertoire of behavioural sequences.

In such a way, new forms of behaviour arising creatively from

play could come to be incorporated into the behavioural reper-
toire of a species through genetic modification. This hypothesis
could be tested by examining whether the most playful species
have evolved the most rapidly. To our knowledge, this has not
yet been done.
We turn in the next chapter to how play and playfulness
can exert important influences in human affairs, particularly in
the processes of creativity and innovation.

conclusions

Play is recognised in many species of birds and mammals.

Whether such behaviour has a common origin in reptilian ances-
tors is a matter of dispute. Alternatively, play might have evolved
separately and be linked to warm-bloodedness or, more directly,
to the extended parental care found in both taxonomic groups.
With time and energy to spare, those individuals that were
motivated to exercise their bodies by playing during develop-
ment would have been at an advantage over those that were
not. In such a scenario, the playful behaviour would have spread
through the population. Once in place, a cascade of biological
benefits could have followed and driven further evolutionary
change. Greater benefits from probing the environment could
have led to improved cognitive abilities underpinned by more
elaborately organised brains. In turn, play behaviour and its
underlying neural structures could have facilitated further crea-
tivity and innovation, so driving the evolutionary loop to greater
and greater complexity. Much of this, although testable, remains
a matter of conjecture, but it serves to emphasise that most or all
of the postulated benefits of play may turn out to be real.
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5
Creativity in humans

Creativity can be defined in different ways. We use

creativity here in the sense of generating novel actions or
ideas, particularly by recombining existing actions, ideas or
thoughts in new ways or applying them in new situations. In
our view, it is preferable to consider separately, under the head-
ing of innovation, the question of whether those new behav-
iour patterns or ideas are practically useful and widely adopted
by others. For our purposes, creativity is simply about generat-
ing novelty and it is a precursor to innovation.
Measures of human creativity have been strongly influ-
enced by J. P. Guilfords (1956) distinction between two styles
of thought, which he described as diverging and converging.
The diverging individual is more open to new ideas and the
converging individual is more critical and analytical. The differ-
ences between the two cognitive styles are measured by what is
called the Alternate Uses Task. When asked what can be done
with, say, a brick, the convergent thinker says it is used for
building a wall. The divergent thinker suggests many different
uses, such as a doorstop, a hammer, breaking windows, repel-
ling an attacker, grinding up to make red paste, and so forth.
Scoring highly on psychological measures of divergent thinking
is sometimes regarded as though it were synonymous with
being highly creative, but it is of course just one measure of
one aspect of human creativity.
Another key figure in the study of creativity has been
Paul Torrance (1972). He identified three main components of

55
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56 Creativity in humans

creativity, which he referred to as fluency, flexibility and origi-

nality. Fluency refers to the number of different ideas that are
generated when a person is asked about alternative uses for a
particular object. Flexibility refers to the capacity to switch
between approaches; someone who generates ideas within
one category will be perceived as less flexible than someone
who generates ideas from multiple sources. Biologists often
refer to the behavioural manifestation of flexibility as adapt-
ability. The third component, originality, refers to the novelty
of the ideas generated and the individuals lack of reliance on
routine or habitual thought. It is possible for somebody to be
fluent without being original, by having lots of conventional
ideas, or original without being fluent, by having one really
groundbreaking idea. A fluent person might come up with a
long list of commonplace uses for an object, whereas an original
person would suggest uses that no one had thought of before
(Runco et al., 2011).
Many other systematic measures of human creativity have
been developed, such as the ability to find non-obvious connec-
tions between words. The Remote Associates Test, for example,
involves presenting participants with a set of words such
as lick, mine and shaker (Mednick, 1968). The task is to identify
another word that connects these three seemingly unrelated
ones. In this example, the answer is salt. The link between words
is associative and does not follow simple rules of logic, concept
formation or problem-solving, and thus requires the respond-
ent to be creative. The personality characteristic of Openness,
which we shall consider further below, specifically itemises
creativity as one of its defining features (Nettle, 2007). Yet
other assessments of creativity rely on subjective judgements
that the individual has generated something novel.
These varied considerations have led some to argue that
a unitary explanation of what lies behind creativity would be
hard to find. Undoubtedly, human creativity is a complex and
multifaceted set of capabilities. As Batey and Furnham (2006)
pointed out, measuring creativity requires a battery of differ-
ent psychological tests, since each test measures a different
facet of the ability. The relations between each measure then
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Links between playfulness and creativity 57

need to be investigated. But despite the problems of defining

and measuring creativity, consensus can usually be achieved
about individual humans or ideas that are judged to be highly
creative.

links between playfulness and creativity

Play involves breaking rules. Playful play involves having fun

while doing so. From play may emerge a new perspective or
cognitive tool that might be used at a later date, possibly in
combination with other perspectives or tools, to solve a new
challenge. In their different ways, both of these consequences
of play are creative. The zoologist George Bartholomew (1982)
wrote: Creativity often appears to be some complex function of
play . . . related to the exuberant behavior of young animals. The
most profoundly creative humans of course never lose this
exuberant creativity.
Human history is full of examples of highly creative and
playful people. Universally admired as an enormously creative
composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was well known  noto-
rious even  for his playfulness. The high-spirited pranks and
jokes were reflected in his music. Robert and MichŁle Root-
Bernstein (2001) noted that his three-voice canon (KV559) con-
sists of a nonsensical Latin text which when sung sounds like
bawdy German. We mentioned in an earlier book how playful
Pablo Picasso was in his art (Bateson & Martin, 1999). He was
once filmed painting onto glass. The onlooker saw the picture
emerge, but viewed from the other side of the glass. Picasso
started by quickly sketching a goat and then rapidly embellish-
ing it. Other shapes appeared and disappeared; colours were
mixed and transformed. By the end of the film the goat had long
since gone and it would have been hard to say what the picture
was all about. Picasso had been playing  probably showing off 
but clearly enjoying himself hugely.
M. C. Escher (1989) wrote about his art in the following
way: I cant keep from fooling around with our irrefutable
certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure knowingly to mix up
two- and three-dimensionalities, flat and spatial, and to make
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58 Creativity in humans

fun of gravity. Famous products of this approach were his

impossible staircases, an idea he got from the medical geneticist
Lionel Penrose and his mathematician son Roger (Penrose &
Penrose, 1958). Escher wrote: They often provided me with
new ideas and sometimes an interaction between them and
myself even develops. How playful they can be, those learned
ladies and gentlemen!
The philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1962) likened scientific
research to play. Whether all research can be regarded as play-
like is doubtful, as Kuhn recognised, but many examples of
playful scientists are well known. The discoverer of the anti-
bacterial properties of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, was
famous for his playfulness. He was described, disapprovingly,
by his boss as treating research like a game and finding it all
great fun. When asked what he did, Fleming said I play with
microbes . . . it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able
to find something that nobody had thought of  (Maurois, 1959).
One of the founders of molecular biology, Max Delbruck, for-
mulated his principle of limited sloppiness. Be sloppy enough,
he urged, so that something unexpected may happen, but not so
sloppy that you cant tell what it was (Judson, 1980). Sloppiness
is not the same as playfulness, of course, but they do have in
common the willingness to generate novel variations for their
own sake and then see what happens. Delbruck was playfully
breaking the rules of serious science. Fleming and Delbruck
each won a Nobel Prize.
Another famously playful scientist and Nobel prizewinner
was Richard Feynman. When Feynman was getting bored with
physics at an early stage in his career, he wrote: Physics dis-
gusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why
did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt
like doing  it didnt have to do with whether it was important
for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was
interesting and amusing for me to play with (Feynman, 1985).
He decided that he would play with physics again, irrespective
of how important it might be. Then, while he was playing,
everything flowed effortlessly and he made fundamental con-
tributions to nuclear physics.
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Links between playfulness and creativity 59

Social play is marked by cooperation between the players.

Competition is limited and roles may be reversed, so individuals
that are dominant in non-playful contexts may allow them-
selves to adopt a subordinate role during play. Sometimes the
playfulness is explicit, as in Jim Watsons famous account of an
extremely important scientific discovery in the early 1950s
(Watson, 1968). He and Francis Crick had set themselves the
task of uncovering the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA). DNA was already recognised as a molecule that could
faithfully replicate itself and carry information that was crucial
to the development of an individual and which could be trans-
mitted from one generation to the next. Watson and Crick were
working in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and the
eyebrows of their sober and hard-working colleagues were
raised when the pair disappeared for convivial lunches in the
Eagle pub and long walks around the colleges. Watsons book
The Double Helix conveys strongly the playful nature of scientific
creativity  the way in which scientists play around with ideas,
trying out new combinations and discarding them if they do not
work. He and Crick seized upon model-building as a way of
rapidly testing different theories of the DNA structure  an
idea that the Nobel-prizewinning chemist Linus Pauling had
previously used in working out the alpha-helical structure of
proteins. The key lay in finding out which atoms would fit next
to each other. To do this, Crick and Watson used a set of col-
oured balls somewhat like childrens toys. Watson wrote: All
we had to do was to construct a set of molecular models and
begin to play  with luck, the structure would be a helix. It was
indeed a helix and its paired structure provided the means for
the molecule to replicate itself.
Another example of the association between playful-
ess and scientific creativity comes from Andre Geim and
Konstantin Novoselov, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize for
physics. The prize was awarded for their discovery of the
wonder material graphene  a two-dimensional lattice of car-
bon atoms which is stiffer and stronger than diamond while
also being stretchable and impermeable to liquids and gases.
Graphene is a better conductor of heat and electricity than
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60 Creativity in humans

copper and it can be made into transistors that are faster than
conventional silicon transistors. The approach that Geim and
Novoselov took to their science was instructive. They first made
graphene by playing with pencil leads and sticky tape. In 2004
they discovered that they could make sheets of graphene from a
fleck of graphite by simply peeling it off with a strip of sticky
tape. In a later interview, Geim said: A playful attitude has
always been the hallmark of my research . . . Fun actually plays
quite a minor part, but it certainly helps. Without it you would
consider your job a burden. But you also have to do things no
one else is doing. Unless you happen to be in the right place
at the right time, or you have facilities no one else has, the
only way is to be more adventurous. In the same interview,
Novoselov said: If you try to win the Nobel you wont. The way
we were working really was quite playful.
Similarly, Daniel Kahneman, who received the Nobel Prize
for economics in 2002, wrote about his playful interactions with
his friend and colleague Amos Tversky, who would have shared
the prize if he had not died some years earlier: Amos was
always very funny and in his presence I became funny as well,
so we spent hours of solid work in continuous amusement. The
pleasure we found in working together made us exceptionally
patient; it is much easier to strive for perfection when you are
never bored (Kahneman, 2011).

the importance of mood

A clear link between certain types of positive mood and crea-

tivity has emerged from many different studies, even if the
results have not always been consistent. As Lyubomirsky, King
and Diener (2005) concluded, pleasant moods promote original
thinking. In contrast, others have reported that positive moods
can inhibit creativity and negative moods can facilitate it (e.g.
George & Zhou, 2002). Context is important. To shed more light
on the relationship between mood and creativity, Davis (2009)
carried out a meta-analysis14 of the results of 62 experimental
studies and 10 non-experimental studies. In general, the results
showed that positive mood is indeed linked to greater creativity.
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The importance of mood 61

However, the relationship takes the form of an inverted U,

reminiscent of the relationship between arousal and perform-
ance. Hyper-excitable positive mood states, it would seem, are
not conducive to creativity, while moderately positive states are
optimal. An important distinction should be recognised
between generating new ideas, which is fostered by positive
mood, and innovative problem-solving, where other motiva-
tional factors such as determination and persistence may play
a role (Davis, 2009). This distinction helps to explain why neg-
ative moods such as anger or competitiveness are found to assist
problem-solving in some circumstances.
During some types of play, individuals may experience a
psychological state known as flow, in which they become
utterly absorbed in the task they are performing and are obliv-
ious of passing time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). Flow is most
likely to occur when an individual is performing a challenging
task that is just within the reach of their ability. Flow is reward-
ing, though it would not always be described as pleasurable in
the conventional sense of the word. Flow can occur in many
situations, both at work and in leisure activities, such as playing
a game or a musical instrument, cooking, performing a delicate
manual task, climbing a mountain, or conducting surgery on a
patient. Those who experience flow sometimes describe them-
selves as being in the zone. Flow helps to make the activities
that produce it intrinsically rewarding.
Intrinsic motivation comes from the pleasure derived
from the task itself or from the sense of satisfaction in complet-
ing it. An intrinsically motivated person works on solving a
problem because the challenge of finding a solution is sufficient
reward. Extensive evidence from psychological research shows
that people tend to work harder and perform better in many
situations when driven by intrinsic rather than extrinsic moti-
vation, especially when performing tasks that are optional.
Indeed, some types of extrinsic reward can actually reduce
performance. A meta-analysis of the results of 128 published
studies examined the effects on intrinsic motivation of extrinsic
rewards such as money or sweets (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999).
Tangible extrinsic rewards significantly undermined intrinsic
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62 Creativity in humans

motivation and the individuals interest in the task. Positive

extrinsic encouragement, of the type Excellent, keep up the
good work, maintained the motivation of college students but
was less effective with children. In general, many experiments
have found that extrinsic rewards can interfere with intrinsic
motivation. Those who are intrinsically motivated may become
less motivated to do what they enjoy, and less persistent, if an
external reward such as money is introduced and later
withdrawn.

individual differences

As in other species, some humans are more intrinsically moti-

vated to do certain things and more creative than others. These
traits may be seen as part of their personality. The so-called
Big Five personality traits that explain much of the observed
variation in human personalities are:
* Extraversion (outgoing, enthusiastic vs. aloof, quiet)
* Neuroticism (prone to stress and worry vs. emotionally stable)
* Conscientiousness (organised, self-directed vs. spontaneous,
careless)
* Agreeableness (trusting, empathetic vs. uncooperative,
misanthropic)
* Openness (creative, imaginative, eccentric vs. practical,
analytical, conventional).

Daniel Nettle (2007) suggested that Openness should be called

openness to experience and noted that the tendency towards
exploration of complex recreational practices is uniquely pre-
dicted by Openness. This dimension of personality captures the
distinction we draw between creativity and innovation, since
innovation tends to be more strongly related to being organised
and analytical.
Hans Eysenck (1995) suggested that creative genius is asso-
ciated with high scores on a scale he called psychoticism,
which is related to mental disorders such as schizophrenia
and sharp mood swings. An individuals vulnerability to schiz-
ophrenia is manifest in a set of personality traits that is now
known as schizotypy. Many studies have shown that individuals
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Individual differences 63

involved in the creative arts, such as poets and artists, tend to

score higher on two dimensions of schizotypal traits (Batey &
Furnham, 2008; Nettle, 2002; Schuldberg, 2000). The two
dimensions are: having unusual experiences such as perceptual
and cognitive aberrations, hallucinations and magical thinking;
and impulsive non-conformity, such as violent and reckless
patterns of behaviour. Nettle (2006) compared the schizotypy
profiles of a large sample of poets, artists, mathematicians and
psychiatric patients against the general population. Poets and
visual artists had more ideas and were more open to new expe-
riences than members of the general population, and were as
distinct from the general population in this respect as were the
psychiatric patients.15 Nettle also found different cognitive
profiles among the creative people. While the poets and artists
were typically divergent thinkers in Guildfords sense, the
mathematicians scored lower than the general population in
having unusual experiences and were generally convergent
thinkers. They were also more likely to be autistic.
Is creativity associated with psychiatric disorders more
generally? Using a massive data set of more than a million
Swedish patients, Kyaga et al. (2012) investigated whether
patients with a wide range of disorders were more strongly
represented in creative professions, defined as those with sci-
entific and artistic occupations. Individuals in creative profes-
sions were no more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders
than matched controls, with the exception of bipolar disorder,
which was more common in the creative professions. Kyaga and
his colleagues did find an association between the creative pro-
fessions and first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia,
bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa, and for siblings of people
with autism. They also investigated authors, defined as people
known for writing, who more or less professionally engage in
writing . . . especially in terms of literary writings. Being an
author was specifically associated with an increased likelihood
of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, anxiety
disorders, substance abuse and suicide.
In a meta-analysis of 83 published studies of personality
and creativity in scientists and artists, Gregory Feist (1998)
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64 Creativity in humans

found that these creative people were more open to new expe-
riences, less conventional, less conscientious, more self-
confident, more self-accepting, more driven, more ambitious,
more dominant, more hostile and more impulsive than less
creative people. Some of these characteristics, such as drive
and ambition, may be more strongly related to innovation
than to creativity. The divergent feature of creativity does not
appear to be correlated with measures of intelligence, which is
typically associated with a convergent personality (Furnham &
Bachtiar, 2008).
Individuals who are more distractible  for example, find-
ing it hard to screen out noises or conversations  are also more
likely to be creative (Carson, Peterson & Higgins, 2003).
Students who had greater difficulty in ignoring unrelated stim-
uli were found to be seven times more likely to be rated as
eminent creative achievers based on their previous accom-
plishments. The proposed explanation was that people who
have difficulty filtering out extraneous stimuli are more likely
to piece together seemingly unrelated ideas.
How is creativity affected by genes? Reuter et al. (2006)
described what they called the first candidate gene for creativ-
ity. Runco et al. (2011) replicated and extended this work,
analysing the alleles of five candidate genes. College students
whose genes were assayed took a battery of tests of their
creative potential. Fluency in producing alternative uses for
objects was significantly associated with differences in the
alleles of four genes coding for two enzymes, either a mem-
brane protein or a receptor associated with mood and the
reward system of the brain.16 However, originality, which is
a different and in some ways better measure of creativity,
was not related to any of the genes under investigation.
The authors concluded that the genetic basis of creativity
remained uncertain. It is worth adding that the notion of
genes for a behavioural characteristic is a convenient but
misleading way of describing a developmental process that
involves many different factors. The correct way to express
the empirical data is in terms of differences in genes being
associated with differences in behaviour.
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The reception of creative ideas and innovations 65

the reception of creative ideas and

innovations

As we have already argued, it is useful to distinguish between

the generation of new ideas or behaviour patterns (creativity)
and their successful implementation and adoption by others
(innovation). This distinction can sometimes be hard to draw,
however, in the realm of the creative arts, where creativity may
not result in practical implementation of any kind. The creative
act may, however, be regarded as innovative when the outcome,
such as a new style of painting, influences the work of others.
The reactions to a supposed act of artistic creativity often lack
consensus or stability across time. Critics of the arts usually
differ among themselves, as do audiences. A work might be an
instant success, only to decline in popularity and be treated as a
passing fad. What at one moment may have been considered
avant-garde or revolutionary may later be forgotten. Another
work might take a long time before it becomes popular and
then remain so for a long period thereafter. In an article on the
creativity of people who composed operas, Simonton (2000)
noted that the successful creative individual has to fit the zeit-
geist, or spirit of the times. He or she must generate the right
product at the right place and at the right time. Originality is not
best measured by popularity.
Steven Johnson (2010) investigated the origins of good
commercial ideas, analysing many examples in which major
acts of inventiveness had occurred. He classified the examples
in two ways. The first was according to whether an Individual (or
small group) was involved, or whether the invention resulted
from a Network in which many groups worked on the same
problem. The other way of classifying the good ideas was
whether the people involved had hoped to make money from
their invention (described as orientated towards the Market) or
had declared no wish to make money from it (Non-market). Using
this simple classification scheme, Johnson obtained a 2 × 2
matrix. In the Market/Individual quadrant he placed people like
Willis Carrier, who invented the air conditioner and made a
colossal fortune from his discovery. In the Non-Market/Individual
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66 Creativity in humans

quadrant he placed people like Tim Berners-Lee, who invented

the World Wide Web to the enormous benefit of fellow human
beings but with no direct financial benefit to himself. In the
Market/Network quadrant were placed examples like the type-
writer, and in the Non-Market/Network quadrant were placed
examples like radar. In all, Johnson examined 135 cases dating
from the year 1800 to the present. He found that two-thirds of
the successful inventions were generated by groups of people
rather than a single individual and, contrary to the belief that
most invention is driven by market forces, two-thirds arose
without an explicit motive to make money.
Johnson argued that innovations arising from good ideas
are much more likely to take off when the social conditions are
right for their reception. In doing this, he alluded to the bio-
logical concept of the adjacent possible, formulated by Stuart
Kauffman (2000). Kauffman pointed out that the necessary con-
dition for each evolutionary burst is a particular combination of
events that had not arisen at an earlier stage in evolution. At the
most elementary level, hydrogen could not form water without
the presence of oxygen. During biological evolution, as the first
lipids self-assembled, they started a process that would ulti-
mately lead to cell membranes, which would in turn form an
envelope within which the first nucleotides might form, lead-
ing to the self-replicating RNAs and DNA.
In human creativity and innovation, ideas have their right
moment in the sciences as well the arts. For instance, the
nineteenth-century Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis
observed that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically
cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrics clinics. The fever
following childbirth was common in mid nineteenth century
maternity hospitals and was often fatal. However, Semmelweiss
observations conflicted with the established scientific and medi-
cal opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected, partly
because Semmelweis could offer no mechanism to explain his
findings. His views earned widespread acceptance only years after
his death, when the role of bacteria in infection was discovered.
Radical scientific proposals, such as that of Alfred
Wegener (1912) about continental drift, have sometimes been
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Winnowing of ideas 67

ridiculed at the outset, only to become part of the consensus

years later. Another famous case was that of Barbara
McClintock (1950), whose discoveries about the transposition
of genes in the genome attracted widespread scepticism. With
later advances in technology, her ideas about jumping genes
were finally accepted and she was awarded a Nobel Prize in
1983. The formalised procedures of science generally mean
that good ideas are eventually vindicated and bad ones are
eventually rejected.
The impact and uptake of a new idea may even be affected
by the social status or celebrity of the person associated with
that idea. Greater credence is often given to the ideas of an
admired person than to those of people of lower status. This
human tendency to indulge in celebrity worship may actually
make good sense in terms of evolutionary biology, if it is seen as
a predisposition to pay attention to and emulate the behaviour
of the most successful individuals. During the course of evolu-
tion, humans probably did benefit, on average, from aping their
most successful peers (Martin, 2005).

winnowing of ideas

Two years before Charles Darwins death, the philosopher and

psychologist William James suggested that the process of inno-
vation by humans is analogous to Darwins account of the evolu-
tionary process of natural selection. Innovation starts with a
variety of different ideas, some good but mostly bad. This pool
of possibilities, James suggested, is subjected to a winnowing
process, leaving only a few that are of any interest. Finally, those
ideas that survive are transmitted into the future. A similar
concept of innovation has appeared in the writings of others,
most notably Donald Campbell (1960), one of whose seminal
papers on epistemology was entitled Blind variation and selec-
tive retention in creative thought as in other knowledge proc-
esses. In much the same vein, Dean Swinton and John Sweller
suggested that the creative process is like the evolutionary
process by which differential survival follows from a mass of
possibilities, some good but most bad. This process, which is
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68 Creativity in humans

known as a genetic algorithm, is used by engineers in develop-

ing optimal designs. It relies on generating and then testing a
wide variety of possibilities and selecting the one that empiri-
cally works best.

conclusions

Human creativity is a complex set of capabilities that can be

measured in a variety of ways, one of which is the divergent
ability to generate many possible uses for an object. Creativity
may be separated into the distinct dimensions of fluency, flex-
ibility and originality. The most creative individuals often
exhibit great playfulness. Some also exhibit less attractive char-
acteristics such as being more driven, more ambitious, more
dominant and more hostile than other people. These features of
their personality may be important in translating good ideas
into practice. We return to the role of play in creativity in
Chapter 7 and explore further how creativity leads on to
innovation.
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6
Animals finding novel solutions

In this chapter we develop the idea that some of the more

interesting cognitive abilities of complicated animals derive
from playful experiences earlier in their lives. We freely admit
that much of what we propose is speculative and the abilities
may also arise in other ways. We begin with a well-known story.
In one of Aesops fables, a crow  half-dead with thirst  came
upon a pitcher but found only a little water in it. He could not
reach far enough down with his beak to get at the water. After
many attempts, he took a pebble and dropped it into the
pitcher. He went on dropping in pebbles, raising the water
level a little at a time, until at last he was able to reach the water.
The fable has become a reality, not with a crow but
another member of the crow family, the rook (Bird & Emery,
2009). In the rooks case the prize was a mealworm lying on the
surface of the water in a transparent plastic tube. The rook
could not reach the mealworm with its beak but, just as in
Aesops fable, when given a pile of pebbles, the bird dropped
them into the water one by one until it had raised the water
level enough and could reach the mealworm. The experiment
was extended using two Eurasian jays, which are also members
of the crow family (Cheke, Bird & Clayton, 2011). The birds were
given piles of two different types of object that could be dropped
into the water. One pile consisted of pebbles and the other
was pieces of cork the same size as the pebbles. The jays quickly
learnt to discriminate between the pebbles, which raised the
water level, and the corks, which floated on top and did nothing

69
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70 Animals finding novel solutions

to raise the level. They too used the pebbles to obtain the food.
In both cases, the birds appeared to understand and then solve a
practical problem with speed and insight, rather than relying
on laborious trial and error.
Many years earlier, Wolfgang Kçhler (1925) described sim-
ilar examples of apparently immediate and insightful under-
standing of problems by chimpanzees. He was director of a
research station owned by the Prussian Academy of Sciences
on the island of Tenerife and continued to devote his time to the
study of captive anthropoid apes when he was interned there
during the First World War. When he suspended a banana out of
reach of the chimpanzees, they quickly piled wooden boxes on
top of each other so that they could reach the banana when they
climbed on top of the platform they had created for themselves.
In another experiment, Kçhler gave the chimps sticks that
could be slotted together and used to reach bananas placed
more than arms length away outside their cage. The chimps
seemed to have a clear idea of what to do in each case. In
Kçhlers phrase, they were unwaveringly purposeful. No trial
and error was required at the time they solved the problems;
they seemed to have insight into the tasks that Kçhler had set
for them. It was as though they had said to themselves: Aha, I
know what to do.

solving problems

Many other examples of mammals and birds finding clever

solutions to novel problems have been described since
Kçhlers time. At the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania, Jane
Goodall and her collaborators recorded many examples of novel
and inventive behaviour in wild chimpanzees (e.g. Kummer &
Goodall, 1985). In one case, chimps used large fuel cans in the
aggressive charging displays by which rivals are intimidated.
One male used the cans in almost all his displays, keeping them
in front of him when he charged towards his superiors. Within
four months of adopting this new behaviour, he had become
the alpha male, having thoroughly intimidated all his rivals
and, as far as is known, without taking part in a single fight.
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Solving problems 71

Novel behaviour patterns are sometimes used when one

animal appears to deceive another. Jane Goodall described the
case of one young adolescent male chimpanzee called Figan.
When other chimps were present, Figan rarely managed to get
hold of the bananas that had been made available to the group
(Kummer & Goodall, 1985). On one occasion, however, he was
observed to get up and walk purposefully away from the
bananas. His mother followed and others, apparently intrigued,
followed after her. Ten minutes later, Figan reappeared by
himself and enjoyed free access to the bananas. The human
observers thought this was a coincidence, until they saw Figan
do exactly the same thing again on four other occasions. It
seemed as though he had worked out how to get what he
wanted through trickery.
This sort of tactical deception behaviour has been inves-
tigated by Whiten and Byrne (1988), who defined it as occur-
ring when an individual is able to use an honest act from its
normal repertoire in a different context in order to mislead
familiar individuals. They described many examples from pri-
mates that looked like genuinely novel behaviour. In one case,
a juvenile baboon, who was watching an adult eating a much-
prized root, gave an alarm call. Its mother rushed over and
drove away the other adult, whereupon the juvenile pro-
ceeded to eat the root.
Some birds generate novel behaviour in their courtship
displays. Males may add extra syllables to the songs they have
copied from their fathers (Marler & Slabberkoorn, 2004).
Bowerbirds may add novel items to their bowers (Frith &
Frith, 2004). The reward for such creativity is not immediate,
although it may lead to greater reproductive success in the end
(Madden, 2007).
Novel use of tools has frequently been observed in birds
and mammals. Among the birds, members of the parrot and
crow families provide some of the best examples. The kea, a
New Zealand parrot (e.g. Huber, Rechberger & Taborsky, 2001)
and the New Caledonian crow (e.g. Hunt, 1996) are especially
remarkable. In one study, the two species were compared on
their ability to extract items of food from a box that could be
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72 Animals finding novel solutions

accessed in different ways (Auersperg et al., 2011). Food could

be extracted from the box by two techniques requiring the use
of tools. One technique involved using a stick to knock the food
off a pole so that the bird could reach it. The other required the
bird to insert a small ball into an opening so that it would roll
down a tube and knock the food off the pole. The birds rapidly
worked out how to obtain food in these ways. The crows were
better at using the stick, whereas the keas were better with the
ball. This difference reflected, in part, the ease with which
the two species could handle the tools.
Dolphins and related sea mammals are extraordinarily
creative in their ability to generate new forms of behaviour. In
one experiment, captive rough-toothed dolphins were trained
to produce novel behaviour patterns on command, and were
reinforced for doing so (Pryor, Haag & OReilly, 1969). This
procedure produced significant increases in novel behaviour.
It also demonstrated that the dolphins could remember behav-
iour patterns they had already performed and could learn to
produce novel behaviour for which they had not previously
been rewarded.
We described in Chapter 2 some of the many and varied
types of play behaviour observed by Kuczaj et al. (2006) in
captive dolphins. In that study, behaviour patterns were consid-
ered novel only if they had not previously been produced by one
of the dolphins. If a young dolphin produced a behaviour pat-
tern that no other dolphin had been observed performing, such
as tossing a ball against the wall of the pool and catching it in its
mouth on the rebound, this was considered to be an example
of novel behaviour. We regard the generation of new types of
behaviour in this way as creative. Although some novel forms
of play were variations of existing behaviour, others were quite
different from anything seen before. For instance, one young
dolphin discovered over the course of an afternoon that it could
take a ball, carefully position it under the opening of a floating
box, and release the ball so that it became lodged in the box.
Another young dolphin learned how to toss a large wooden disc
so that it skimmed across the surface of the water. This behav-
iour initially startled the other young dolphins that had been
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Solving problems 73

observing his play, but it soon intrigued them. They regrouped

behind the disc-tossing dolphin and watched his subsequent
attempts to skim the disc across the surface of the water.
As the dolphins grew older, their play became increasingly
elaborate and they produced more and more novel forms of
play. These included swimming upside down on the surface of
the water while holding a ball between the pectoral fins, jump-
ing in the air and landing on a ball, using the tail fluke to pin a
ball against the bottom of the pool, and pushing a ball along the
bottom of the pool. One dolphin, who had picked up a feather,
stationed herself in front of an underwater stream of water
flowing into the pool; she repeatedly released the feather so
that it initially floated away from her and was caught in the
stream, which brought the feather back to her, and so on.
Another dolphin carried a scarf in its mouth while swimming;
it released the scarf, catching it on one of its pectoral fins, then
let it go again and caught it with its tail fluke. Altogether, 317
distinct types of novel behaviour had been observed by the time
the dolphins were older, many of which were copied by other
individuals (Kuczaj et al., 2006).
One particularly interesting technique used by dolphins
when playing is to blow bubbles from their blowhole when
underwater. Some dolphins become expert at blowing rings of
bubbles, with which they then play (Marten et al., 1996). Kuczaj
et al. (2006) observed one dolphin using its fluke to hit bubbles
that had just been released, swimming under a bubble ring that
had just been produced and releasing more bubbles that passed
through the ring.
In the wild, dolphins blow a screen of bubbles underwater
to drive fish to the surface, where they can catch them more
easily (Fertl & Wilson, 1997). Another example of an acquired
form of foraging behaviour by dolphins is the use of basket
sponges. In Shark Bay, Western Australia, some bottlenose dol-
phins wear a basket sponge on their beak while lightly scouring
the seafloor for prey (Mann et al., 2012; Smolker et al., 1997).
The sponge is thought to protect the dolphins delicate beak.
The practice of using sponges in this way is passed down from
mother to daughter in a few specific families, which implies
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74 Animals finding novel solutions

that the creative individual who first invented this technique

lived some time in the past.
A remarkable instance of novel and unusual behaviour is
the cooperative foraging observed in certain small groups of
humpback whales in southeast Alaska and the west coast of
South America. Many species of marine mammals use bubbles
to help them catch prey, but some humpback whales have
developed an elaborate technique in which they use a cylindri-
cal curtain of bubbles to surround shoals of herrings. One whale
blows a wide circle of bubbles that rises to make a curtain. Other
whales emit loud calls that drive the herring towards the bubble
wall. As the fish come close to the bubbles, the bubble-blowing
whale encloses the wall of bubbles around them, creating a
cylinder with the fish trapped inside. The other whales position
themselves at the bottom of the cylinder and the herring flee
upwards, driven by the whales calls from beneath them. The
whales move upwards together and, as they approach the sur-
face, each one opens its mouth wide and consumes large num-
bers of fish in a gulp17 (Wiley et al., 2011). This remarkable and
effective feeding technique is seen only in a few specific pop-
ulations of humpback whales, most notably those feeding in
southern Alaska, suggesting that, at one point, it was a creative
discovery.

development of novel solutions

These and other examples of individual animals producing

novel solutions to problems are suggestive of some remarkable
cognitive abilities. But how did these abilities develop within
those individuals? One possibility is that the behaviour is
expressed spontaneously, with little or no dependence on rele-
vant previous experience. In Chapter 4 we discussed how com-
plicated sequences of behaviour could be learned initially but
then, in the course of evolution, they come to be expressed
without dependence on learning. Such explanations do not,
however, readily explain how individual dolphins and whales
invent new forms of behaviour, which are then copied by other
members of their social group.
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Development of novel solutions 75

Some aspects of the use of tools by New Caledonian crows

do seem to be inherited (Kenward et al., 2006). The same is also
true for the Galapagos woodpecker finch, which uses cactus
spines to prise insect larvae out of holes and has a predis-
position to pick up sticks when young (Tebbich et al., 2010).
However, developmental studies of tool use by New Caledonian
crows suggest that much of their problem-solving skill involves
both trial-and-error and social learning from watching what a
parent or human tutor does (Holzhaider, Hunt & Gray, 2010;
Kenward et al., 2006).
Another possibility, often raised in discussions of novel
behaviour, is that the individual generalises from experience
that it has obtained in other contexts (Shettleworth, 2010).
Evidence that this can happen came from an experimental
study in which pigeons were trained in the individual elements
of behaviour that would eventually lead them, apparently
insightfully, to push a box under a banana that was out of
reach (Epstein et al., 1984). First, the pigeons were rewarded
with grain for climbing onto a box and pecking a banana-like
object. Jumping at the banana was not rewarded. The pigeons
were then rewarded in interspersed trials for pushing the box to
a place marked by a spot. Finally, they were tested with the
banana out of reach but with the box not beneath it. After some
conflict between looking up at the banana and looking at the
box, the pigeons pushed the box around and, when it was under
the banana, hopped onto it and pecked at the banana. In the
final stage of the process, the pigeons behaved very much like
Kçhlers chimpanzees, but did this by generalising from the
skills they had previously acquired through the sequence of
training. This ability to put past experience to a new use
might be regarded as a limited form of creativity.
A related possibility, which lies at the heart of this book, is
that in the course of playing earlier in their lives, individuals
discover properties of their environment that prove crucial
when they are later faced with a new challenge. Young rooks,
jays and magpies are playful, actively manipulating objects in
ways that could reveal much about how the world works and
what leads to what. They certainly pick up small stones and may
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76 Animals finding novel solutions

even drop them into puddles, raising the level of the water.
Similarly, young chimps readily play with sticks, and if they
have played with bamboo sticks they might discover that a smaller
stick can be threaded inside the hole of a larger one, creating a
longer stick. This possibility was supported by one small-scale
experiment showing that a chimp that had prior opportunities
to play with sticks solved the problem, whereas individuals that
had no such prior opportunities failed (Birch, 1945).
Perhaps the bubble-blowing humpback whales had at
some point in the past discovered this remarkable hunting
technique by playfully blowing bubbles and learning that fish
will not swim through a bubble screen. Then perhaps they
cooperated to create a cylindrical screen and drive the fish
upwards to the surface where they could be caught easily. It is
known that their playful relatives, the dolphins, do invent novel
forms of behaviour and readily copy the novel behaviour of
other dolphins. A similar process of discovery through play
may plausibly have given rise to the remarkable feeding techni-
ques of the humpbacks. Either way, the behaviour of these
highly intelligent animals could reasonably be regarded as cre-
ative, because it involves the generation of new forms, and
innovative, because the novel behaviour is then used for
practical benefit and adopted by others.18

conclusions

Some birds and some mammals have an astonishing ability to

solve difficult problems in apparently insightful ways. The
developmental processes that give rise to such remarkable cog-
nitive abilities are not yet well understood. In some cases, play-
ing earlier in life may have been involved in acquiring the
necessary cognitive tools. The behaviour of dolphins and
whales provides compelling examples of what appear to be
creativity and innovation, some of which may have been facili-
tated by previous play.
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7
People and organisations

We have argued from biological evidence that experiences

gained during play can be used later in life and put together in
novel ways to solve new problems. Play experiences may also
lead immediately to the discovery of new ways of doing things.
At the heart of play is the pleasure of engaging in the activity or
thought process for its own sake, without any extrinsic reward.
Even so, the creativity fostered by play can bring its own
rewards. These will be intrinsic, but the rewards may also be
material if creativity leads to successful innovation that benefits
the player and others. In this chapter, we first examine how
others have viewed the satisfaction that creativity brings and
the conditions that are conducive to creativity in organisations.
We then consider how prior opportunities for play can facilitate
the discovery of new ideas. Once discovered, the process of
translating new ideas into innovations involves different skills.

individual creativity

The social psychologist and educationalist Graham Wallas

(1926) described five stages of the creative process, from prepa-
ration, incubation, intimation and illumination through to ver-
ification. Preparation involves formulating the problem to be
solved. Incubation involves pondering potential solutions, pos-
sibly over a long period of time. Intimation involves articulating
ways in which the problem might be solved, and illumination
and verification involve testing the possibilities. Like others

77
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78 People and organisations

before him, Wallas considered creativity to be a process that

allows humans to adapt to their changing environment. Since
his time, the concept of creativity has developed extensively.
In Chapter 5 we described how creative people tend to be
more open to new experiences, less conventional, less consci-
entious and more impulsive than less creative people. These
characteristics are linked to relatively stable features of person-
ality. Stability is often equated with inherited characteristics,
but the notion that personality in some sense develops inde-
pendently of experience is, to say the least, arguable. Clearly,
experience has a great effect on behaviour and personality,
particularly early in development (Bateson & Martin, 1999).
The extent to which a child is playful depends on how he or
she developed. For example, Barnett and Kleiber (1984) found
that first-born boys were less playful than later-born ones, and
other environmental factors such as the socioeconomic status
of the family were also associated with differences in the child-
rens playfulness.19 The overall conclusion from a range of
evidence is that environmental and epigenetic factors are likely
to influence both playfulness and creativity.
Creativity is responsive to experience and can be influ-
enced by specific forms of education. Training courses to
enhance creativity in adults have been established and have
had some degree of success, particularly in the domain of inno-
vation. A meta-analysis of 70 published studies indicated that
the more effective programmes focused on the development of
cognitive skills and the application of those skills to specific
problems (Scott, Leritz & Mumford, 2004). Simple practical
measures can also help. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996) noted
that a number of obstacles often lie in the path of personal
creativity: exhaustion from too many demands, distractions
that fragment thought, lack of direction and plain laziness can
all get in the way of being creative. He argued that all of these
barriers could be overcome, and offered advice on how to do it.
The first step, he suggested, is to free up time from the pursuit
of predictable goals in order to engage curiosity and look
for surprises. With mental energy enhanced, Csikszentmihalyi
recommended avoiding time-wasting distractions such as
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Individual creativity 79

aimlessly watching television, and also making best use of the

bodys natural circadian rhythms, since most people are more
productive at certain times of the day. He also suggested finding
particular spaces and places that enhance reflective thought
and creativity.
One especially important factor that is known to make a
significant difference to creativity is the range and variety of
contacts the individual has. Someone with just a few very famil-
iar friends may lack stimulation and exposure to new ideas,
whereas someone with a huge number of casual acquaintances
may be overloaded. Around 50 people has been suggested as
being about the optimal size of a personal network in order to
stimulate creativity (King, 2012), although the nature and mix
of those contacts is bound to be important. The use of social
media enables interactions with much bigger networks and a
much more extensive interchange of ideas. We believe that the
degree of playfulness in the interactions someone has with
their contacts may be a major influence on how creative they
are. This issue relates to the creativity found in groups, which
we consider in the next section.
As we argued in the Chapter 5, mood is crucial. Many
authors have noted how a generally positive state of mind
can stimulate creativity (e.g. Isen & Reeve, 2005; Lyubomirsky
et al., 2005). We have argued that a particular kind of positive
mood  the one associated with playfulness  may be especially
beneficial. Playfulness, however, is not the only mood to affect
creativity, and even negative moods may act as a stimulus. An
individual who is indignant about some wrongdoing, for exam-
ple, may be motivated to produce creative solutions to such a
challenge. Emergencies, whether personal or national, can be a
spur to major discovery such as the cracking of codes or the
invention of new weapons during times of war. For some
people, the prospect of large financial rewards can provide a
powerful incentive to be creative and to turn the creative idea
into a successful innovation.
Mood affects different aspects of creativity in different
ways. Three dimensions of creativity, as described previously,
are fluency, flexibility and originality. The evidence suggests
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80 People and organisations

that these facets of creativity are differentially affected by emo-

tional state. A meta-analysis of the results of 102 separate stud-
ies showed how mood is associated with different aspects of
creativity (Baas, De Dreu & Nijstad, 2008). Positive moods were
found to produce more originality and fluency than negative
moods, but they were not linked to other measures of creativity.
However, the relationship between mood and creativity cannot
be understood in terms of a simple dichotomy between positive
and negative moods. So-called activating positive moods, such
as elation, were found to be associated with higher levels
of creativity, whereas deactivating positive moods, such as
serenity, were not. This finding ran counter to the common
belief that creative ideas emerge when people are relaxing.
Furthermore, Baas et al. (2008) found suggestive evidence that
some mood states, such as feeling happy, may generate original
ideas through enhanced fluency, whereas others, such as anger,
may exert their effects through enhanced persistence with the
task. This difference makes sense in terms of the distinction we
have drawn between generating new ideas (creativity) and turn-
ing those ideas into practical solutions that are adopted by
others (innovation). Being a successful innovator is likely to
require many psychological and emotional attributes  such as
determination, focus and resilience  that may have little to do
with the ability to generate novel thoughts.

creativity in groups

A much-used approach in encouraging people to be creative is

to bring them together in groups, whether physically or virtu-
ally, using social media. Many more opportunities for combin-
ing disparate thoughts in creative ways will arise when people
interact with each other rather than working in isolation. And
indeed, the evidence shows that groups or networks are gener-
ally much more successful at consistently producing useful new
ideas than solitary individuals. For example, the analysis by
Steven Johnson (2010), which we mentioned in Chapter 5,
found that two-thirds of successful ideas had come from net-
works rather than single individuals. The most creative and
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Creativity in groups 81

inventive organisations, such as Google, Apple, MIT Media Lab

and Bell Labs, have recognised this and have put in place institu-
tional mechanisms intended specifically to bring together
people from different backgrounds in order to maximise the
intermingling of disparate ideas.
An important ingredient for success in creative group
endeavours is for the group to contain people with a wide
range of knowledge and skills. Diversity encourages greater
creativity, and multidisciplinary approaches are of proven
effectiveness in generating new ideas (e.g. Alves et al., 2007).
The diversity of the participants increases the likelihood that
novel combinations of ideas and experience will be brought
together. Many of these novel combinations will not result in
good ideas, but the chances of success are improved. As well as
diverse knowledge, creative groups also benefit from having a
preference for thinking in novel ways, persistence in overcom-
ing obstacles, and a willingness to have fun (Sternberg,
OHara & Lubart, 1997).
The value of bringing people together lies behind many
common techniques for producing ideas. Recognising that peo-
ple are not always good at devising arresting new ideas when
working on their own, an advertising executive called Alex
Osborn (1952) encouraged his colleagues to work in groups in
order to brainstorm, as he called it. He suggested that brain-
storming groups should follow four simple rules.

1. They should focus on quantity of ideas, since this increases the

chances of coming up with an idea of real quality. In terms of
creativity, this means maximising fluency rather than originality
or flexibility.
2. The participants should withhold all criticism.
3. They should actively welcome unusual ideas.
4. They should be encouraged to combine unusual ideas to generate
something even more imaginative.

When the brainstorming process worked well, social inhibitions

broke down and, it was argued, imaginative ideas flowed freely.
The basic idea of brainstorming has long since entered the
public consciousness and is still widely regarded as a standard
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82 People and organisations

way of generating ideas. However, the effectiveness of brain-

storming, as it is often practised, has been called into doubt by
evidence suggesting that it may in fact not work as well as it is
supposed to. In one meta-analysis, Diehl and Stroebe (1991)
found that in 18 out of the 22 published studies they examined,
groups of people brainstorming together actually produced
fewer original ideas than individuals working separately or
in groups that discussed ideas in more conventional ways.
Moreover, members of brainstorming groups often overesti-
mated the value of their inventiveness and fell into the trap of
supposing they had come up with a particularly good idea.
One reason why simple brainstorming often falls short is
because it fails to follow its own rules of creating a truly pro-
tected context in which new ideas can be offered without fear of
criticism. In practice, dominant members of the group may hog
the discussion and inhibit others who do not want to make fools
of themselves. Moreover, the activity of some members encour-
ages laziness in others, who do not exert themselves and there-
fore contribute less. As a result, potentially fruitful avenues may
not be explored. In contrast, a well-conducted conventional
group discussion, in which everyone is permitted to analyse
and criticise new ideas, may encourage all the participants to
work harder, think more deeply, and therefore contribute more
to the quantity and quality of ideas. Empirical evidence indi-
cates that debate and productive criticism may actually stimu-
late good ideas rather than inhibiting them (Nemeth et al.,
2004). Again, the parallel with play is worth noting: play occurs
in a protected context without concern for the outcome, and
the positive mood associated with playfulness may encourage
divergent thinking.20
A common feature of the most creative and innovative
organisations is that employees are less subject to heavy
bureaucratic constraints. Those responsible for generating the
new ideas are often allowed free time to think laterally and
explore wild ideas, without being punished for wasting time.
The 3M Company, for example, encourages people to devote
time, known as the boot-legging hour, to activities that at first
sight might seem unproductive (Lehrer, 2012). The company
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Creativity in groups 83

allows every researcher to spend 15% of their working day

pursuing speculative ideas. Using a similar principle, Google
gives its software engineers the freedom of what it calls
innovation time off. The free flow of ideas is encouraged
throughout the day, and canteens where people can meet to
talk provide free food. Other innovative companies such as
Netflix have removed most of the administrative burdens
from its potentially creative employees in order to develop a
productive environment. Organisations that rely on innovation
must also be willing to risk more failures in the initial creative
stages (Kanter, 2006). The effectiveness of such approaches will
of course depend on the nature of the company, and raw crea-
tivity may be less critical in retail or service industries than it is
in, say, technology sectors that depend for their survival on
sustaining rapid innovation. But in almost any workplace, crea-
tivity is more likely to thrive when employees are given some
freedom to develop their own ideas and interact playfully with
others (Scott & Bruce, 1994).
Working conditions can clearly facilitate or impede crea-
tivity (Amabile et al., 1996). While less research attention has
been directed to environments that impede creativity, a num-
ber of factors distinguish between high-creativity environments
and those associated with low creativity. People working in a
highly creative environment tend to receive more encourage-
ment by the parent organisation and the supervisors of projects.
More freedom and resources are given to those working on new
projects. By providing a more relaxed working atmosphere, the
intrinsic motivation of those involved in generating creative
solutions can be enhanced (McLean, 2005).
A limited amount of empirical research has been con-
ducted on the design of physical environments conducive to
creativity (Moultrie et al., 2007). It suggests that factors such as
the colour of the surroundings may have some influence on
mood and creativity. In one study, people were more creative
in response to test questions about alternative uses presented to
them on a computer when the background screen colour was
blue (Mehta & Zhu, 2009). This lends support to the belief that
creativity can be mildly stimulated by painting walls blue. Some
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84 People and organisations

indirect evidence about the subtle influence of the physical

environment comes from research on the design of hospitals.
One study found that patients in hospital wards in which they
could see trees outside recovered more quickly after surgery
and required fewer analgesics than patients who could not see
outside (Ulrich, 1984). Subsequent research found that nursing
staff were more likely to stay in their jobs if they worked in
hospital wards with outside views. Everybody, it seemed, was a
little bit happier and a little less stressed. An academic journal
called Health, Environments, Research and Design (HERD) is devoted
to evidence-based designs intended to improve health (e.g.
Ulrich et al., 2010). Given the importance of positive mood to
playfulness and creativity, it seems likely that the type of
research published in HERD could also be useful in designing
environments that are conducive to generating novel and inno-
vative ideas. The ideal environment might be one that helps to
foster the right balance of social interaction, stimulation and
playfulness without being excessively relaxing. Creativity can-
not be forced, but it can be encouraged.

the role of play and playfulness

In their book Sparks of Genius, Robert and MichŁle Root-Bernstein

(2001) explored the playfulness of famous scientists, artists and
composers. In describing their work, creative people often make
passing reference to a positive or playful mood and to toying with
ideas. Other academics, such as Sternberg, OHara and Lubart
(1997), have been explicit about the importance for creativity of
having fun. In the foregoing discussion of creativity, many of the
conditions that enhance the generation of new ideas are pre-
cisely those generated by play and, in particular, by playful
play, in which play is accompanied by a positive, light-hearted
mood that fosters divergent thinking and the connection of
previously unconnected thoughts. Positive social interactions
are potentially important in generating the right mood. So too
is freedom from burdensome constraints and the availability of a
stress-free (but not excessively relaxing) environment. Intrinsic
motivation and fluency of thought are enhanced when curiosity
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Innovation 85

is aroused and the individual is looking for surprises. Immediate

success or failure are irrelevant to the activity, at least while it is
in progress. The essence of play involves entering many blind
alleys that often lead nowhere but occasionally lead somewhere
really interesting.
Although creativity and innovation are often used inter-
changeably in the context of business, we have distinguished
between them. We framed creativity in terms of the generation
of novel ideas, whereas innovation is the successful implemen-
tation of those ideas and their uptake by others. Creativity, in
this sense, is a necessary precursor to innovation, providing the
raw material for a successful outcome. While we think a strong
case can be made for the role of play and playfulness in fostering
creativity, the successful implementation and spread of a good
idea requires many further steps and different skills, including
persistence, analytical thinking and attention to detail. Play and
playfulness are more directly relevant to creativity (in our
terms) than they are to innovation.

innovation

The crucial importance of creativity and innovation to organ-

isations and nations should be self-evident. The most successful
companies take active steps to foster the creation of new ideas
and see them through to implementation. However, some
organisations and companies, often the less successful ones,
do little more than pay lip service to the principle (Kanter,
2009). With that possibly in mind, President Obama stressed
the importance of creativity and innovation in his 2011 State of
the Union message:
The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.
None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be
or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldnt
know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic
revolution. What we can do  what America does better than anyone
else  is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. Were the
nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of
Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America,
innovation doesnt just change our lives. It is how we make our living.
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86 People and organisations

When creativity gives rise to innovation, the winnowing of new

ideas, as described by Campbell (1960) and others, becomes
central. Many ideas, including some cherished ones, may have
to be discarded. The process of converting a creative idea into a
successful innovation can involve extremely hard and pro-
longed work and may not be at all playful. The discoverers of
the molecular structure of DNA, Jim Watson and Francis Crick,
were highly competitive with their potential rivals and always
eager to beat them to uncovering what they referred to as the
secret of life.
Although playful creativity is often an essential precursor
to successful innovation, it may sometimes cause tensions
within organisations, particularly those under intense commer-
cial pressure. At worst, a degree of conflict may arise between
those who are given considerable freedom to play with interest-
ing new concepts and those responsible for transforming those
concepts as rapidly and cheaply as possible into practical,
revenue-earning products (Kanter, 2006). Leadership and man-
agerial skills may be required to avoid such conflict. Managers
overseeing the innovative process must also keep an eye on
potentially destructive criticism or scepticism, just as they do
at the initial stage of generating creative ideas. The general
manager of invention factory IDEO noted that a new idea or
proposal can be buried when somebody says: Let me just play
devils advocate for a minute. Having invoked the protective
power of that phrase, the critic can easily destroy the fledgling
concept (Kelley, 2006). The positive and cooperative mood that
is so important in fostering creativity serves an important role
at the implementation stage as well.
Creativity, and hence innovation, may be improved simply
by doing more, and thereby creating more potential opportuni-
ties for new ideas to succeed. One piece of empirical evidence
that supports this principle is the correlation that exists between
the quality of music, literature or science produced by individuals
and the quantity of work they have previously produced for public
consumption (Simonton, 1997). Productivity in the arts and the
sciences tends to grow with experience, although the peak in
quality tends to come early in fields such as mathematics.
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Innovation 87

Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton (2000) spent 5 years

studying innovative businesses and concluded that success has
little to do with nurturing solitary genius and everything to do
with organisation and attitude. As they put it, the best innova-
tors serve as intermediaries, or brokers, between otherwise
disconnected pools of ideas. They use their in-between vantage
point to spot old ideas that can be used in new places, new ways,
and new combinations. The process involves capturing good
ideas, keeping ideas alive, imagining new uses for old ideas, and
putting promising concepts to the test. Keeping ideas alive is
important where valuable information may otherwise be lost
when employees move on. To safeguard against such losses,
some companies store ideas in collections of electronic records,
notes, drawings and even  in some cases  discarded material
that may look like junk but could embody potentially interest-
ing ideas. According to Hargadon and Sutton, the most
respected innovators have large private collections of stuff,
know where to find things, and go out of their way to help
others by sharing their knowledge. So-called invention facto-
ries, which specialise in providing innovative solutions for
other organisations, collect related products and writings on
those products, and take time to observe users of existing
products.
As we have already pointed out, excellence in one area of
activity, such as creativity, is not necessarily accompanied by
excellence in another area such as practical innovation. The
creative people who came up with the ideas are not always
the best equipped for testing and putting them into practice.
The different skills involved in producing ideas and turning
them into reality are reflected in a lack of correlation between
creativity in early life and material success in later life (Runco
et al., 2010). But even if creativity is not a certain road to riches,
the creative people in that study stated, towards the end of their
lives, that they had gained considerable personal satisfaction
from what they had done.
The academic study of innovation has grown massively in
the past half century.21 In his introduction to the Oxford
Handbook of Innovation, Fagerberg (2005) noted that invention,
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88 People and organisations

in the sense of coming up with a good creative idea, and inno-

vation are so closely linked that they are hard to distinguish
from each other, as in biotechnology, for example; but that a
considerable time lag often occurs between the two. Even when
a creative idea has been transformed into a working product, it
may still fail to corner the market in the face of competition,
costs, production difficulties or consumer indifference. Time
and again, transformational technological innovations have
been preceded by other innovations that encapsulated the
basic creative ideas but failed to take off commercially. For
example, the MP3 player arrived before the iPod and simple
personal computers preceded the IBM PC and Apple
Macintosh. Good ideas can be around for a long time before
they become commercially successful products. As in the case of
play behaviour in young organisms, the benefits may not accrue
until much later. Commercial or artistic products that are
judged to be innovative must be original. At the same time,
however, the successful innovator must not produce work
that is excessively novel, because it may seem disagreeably
strange to others.

conclusions

Facilitating play and playfulness can be helpful in generating

new ideas that in turn may become new products or new ways
of doing things. For the individual, the experiences accumu-
lated during play may not be useful immediately  though
some may. However, they may be of great significance later
on, when the individual is faced with a challenge that requires
a creative solution. In organisations concerned with making
new discoveries, the practical implementation of new ideas
generally requires different skills from those needed for gener-
ating the ideas in the first place.
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8
Childhood play and creativity

Even the most cursory glance at humanity reveals the

enormous importance of each persons experience, upbringing
and culture. Take the astonishing variation among humans in
language, dietary habits, mating customs, child-care practices,
clothing, religion, architecture, art, and much else besides.
Nobody could seriously doubt the remarkable human capacity
for learning from personal experience and learning from
others. Many of the differences between people derive from
what happened to them when they were young. It would be
very surprising, therefore, if play in childhood had no effect on
adult behaviour. The question that is central to the theme of
this book is this: does play in childhood enhance creativity in
later life? Governments of all stripes recognise the need for
innovation in order to produce prosperity. Scientists and engi-
neers similarly understand the need for creative and innovative
thinkers in their profession. We argue in this chapter that play
and playfulness in childhood are potentially important in mak-
ing adults more creative. Play comes in many forms, particu-
larly in children, so we consider whether some types of play are
more important than others in affecting subsequent creativity.
We also touch on the role of playfulness in education.22
The belief that play is an important part of how children
acquire knowledge has been extraordinarily influential in edu-
cational circles in Britain and North America. Peter Smith (2010)
commented that many researchers in this field had gone too far
in assuming that play was essential for normal development

89
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90 Childhood play and creativity

and that playing was the best, or only, way of acquiring essen-
tial skills and experience. Such scepticism about the signifi-
cance of play has not removed concern on the part of others
that apparent restrictions on aspects of childrens play in the
developed world could have unfortunate and unintended con-
sequences for their development. We return to this issue later
in the chapter.

play, playfulness and creativity

We noted in Chapter 5 how creative scientists, composers and

artists are often described as being playful in their professional
activities. Many of the MacArthur Fellows who were honoured
for their creative work as adults reported engaging in extensive
imaginary play during their childhood and regarded their play
as having relevance for their adult work (Root-Bernstein & Root-
Bernstein, 2006). As one of the scientists said: It is necessary to
imagine what needs to be discovered before discovery can be
made. Such evidence is merely suggestive rather than conclu-
sive, because a comparison group was lacking and the study was
retrospective. In contrast to the MacArthur Fellows, when the
Root-Bernsteins asked college science students about the impor-
tance of their childhood play, the students failed to see its
relevance to their scientific careers. The Root-Bernsteins specu-
lated that many science students are not encouraged to value
the imaginative or playful aspects of their discipline and under-
estimate the creativity needed to succeed in it. Science students
often have so much material to assimilate that they have little
opportunity to think creatively.
The question of whether play and playfulness lead to crea-
tivity, the other way round, or both facilitate each other, has
proved difficult to answer. In an early study, girls and boys who
played more were more creative in terms of their originality and
fluency than a matched control sample of children who played
less (Torrance, 1961).23 Evidence that playfulness (as distinct
from play) is linked to creativity came from research by Nina
Lieberman (1977). She defined playfulness as a state in which
the child exhibits spontaneity, manifest joy and a sense of
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Play, playfulness and creativity 91

humour. Playful, friendly teasing was distinguished from hos-

tile wit, which is not playful. Lieberman found that the more
playful children were also more creative. What might be
responsible for such differences in creativity? One hypothesis
is that playfulness boosts creativity. Another is that a predispo-
sition to being creative could also enhance playfulness. Studies
such as those of Lieberman and others that followed raised
important questions about the causal link between play, play-
fulness and creativity, but were unable to answer them.
In order to study causality, an experimental approach is
required. Many experiments have attempted to give some chil-
dren more opportunities to play while other children, acting as a
comparison group, have not experienced this intervention. The
results have not always matched expectations. In one study,
Moore and Rudd (2008) studied the effects of play on creativity
28 months after a play intervention. Forty-five children aged
68 years participated in five 30-minute individual sessions over
a period of 35 weeks. They were randomly assigned to one of
three groups. In the first group, each child was asked to make up
their own stories about specified topics. Children in the second
group were encouraged to express their feelings when given a set
of toys, including dolls, blocks, plastic animals, Lego toys and cars.
Members of the third group, initially classified as the controls,
were asked to put together puzzles and colour pictures in a book.
When the children were subsequently assessed using tests of
alternative uses, the supposed control group unexpectedly scored
the highest of the three groups on measures of creative thinking.
The authors speculated that some unknown aspects of the play
intervention might have interfered with the creative processes of
the children in the other two groups. For example, attempting to
fit a story into an ordered and logical structure might have
inhibited mental flexibility and the generation of multiple asso-
ciations. Moreover, some aspects of the control procedure might
have inadvertently facilitated the childrens creativity, perhaps
because they were not constrained by specific storylines. Even
though the adults supervising the experiment attempted to limit
discussion to standardised prompts, the children in the control
group were free to talk about events in their daily lives and think
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92 Childhood play and creativity

about whatever they wanted. Whatever the actual reasons, these

findings emphasise how subtle the effects of play interventions
can be.
In an important experimental study of play and creativity,
86 Spanish children aged 10 and 11 years were initially assessed
for their verbal and graphic creativity (Garaigordobil, 2006). The
subsequent play interventions consisted of a 2-hour play session
once a week for most of the school year. In each session the
children were told about the aims of each game and were given
instructions for carrying it out. One of the games involved each
player receiving a sheet of paper and a pencil, dividing the sheet
in half by drawing a line across the centre, and then drawing an
animal in the upper half. When the player had finished the
drawing, he or she passed it to the player on one side and
received another sheet from the player on the other. The second
player then had to draw another animal in the lower half of the
sheet, incorporating a part of the body from the animal in the
upper half. The transformation was then described by the sec-
ond child at the bottom of the sheet. So, for example, the first
child might have drawn an elephant and his or her partner
might have drawn a butterfly, using the ears of the elephant
as wings. The second child might then describe the finished
drawing as the elephant has turned into a butterfly. Other
games included inventing advertisements for a product or serv-
ice; drawing, as a team, a mural on a large sheet of paper;
inventing new names for familiar objects; devising funny draw-
ings; and conducting imaginary conversations over the tele-
phone. After the game, the children sat in a circle and each
team presented its conclusions about what its members had
done. This was followed by a discussion in which the results of
their activities were analysed. Children in a control group car-
ried out supervised artistic activities from the normal school
curriculum, receiving the same overall level of attention from
adults as those in the play intervention group.
At the end of the school year, the children were all tested
for their ability to produce new ideas (fluency), their aptitude
for changing from one line of thought to another (flexibility),
and their capacity to find solutions that were far from obvious,
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Pretend play 93

common, or established (originality). In testing originality, for

example, the child was presented with a black blot and asked to
draw something that included the blot and give the drawing a
title. The children were also asked to paint a picture on a theme
of their own choice. Their paintings were judged independently
by artists, who were asked to look for, among other things,
novelty, fantasy and breaking away from reality.
The results revealed a clear link between the childrens
play experience and their subsequent creativity. The boys and
girls who received more opportunities for play significantly
increased their verbal and graphic creativity scores compared
with the controls. The biggest effects of the additional play
experience were seen in those children who had scored low
on creativity before the intervention.24 These results are all
the more compelling because considerable efforts were made
to control for other aspects of the intervention that were not
directly related to play experience. The intermittent interven-
tion extended over most of the school year, so the results cannot
be explained by a short-term boost in playfulness or general
activity. We think this study provides good evidence that the
play experiences of the children in the intervention group
boosted their creativity at a later stage,25 although it did not
show whether the effects persisted into later life. This could be a
goal for future research.

pretend play

Pretend play by children imitates adult actions in a non-

functional context, such as playing at being a doctor. Pretend
play may not be playful in the sense that we have defined it,
involving a positive and light-hearted mood. Moreover it may
not result in greater creativity on the part of the child. A thor-
ough and critical review of the influence of pretend play on a
variety of cognitive dimensions in children, including creativ-
ity, concluded that pretend play has little measurable effect
(Lillard et al., 2013). The authors considered three hypotheses
that had originally been proposed by Peter Smith (2010);
namely, that pretend play has a direct causal influence on
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94 Childhood play and creativity

cognition; or it is one of several processes that can lead to the

same endpoint (equifinality); or that pretend play is a side-effect
or epiphenomenon of other processes involved in the develop-
ment of cognition. They concluded that the evidence for pre-
tend play enhancing creativity is not convincing, and argued
that the occurrence of pretend play is correlated with some
other, unspecified, factor that relates to creativity. Lillard et al.
(2013) commented that the studies they reviewed were limited
in many ways and more high-quality research was needed.
Sample sizes were often very small, the play interventions
were often very limited in scale, and the measurements of
creativity were often questionable.
Despite this negative conclusion that pretend play does
not appear to boost creativity, at least when measured in stand-
ard ways, some long-term changes in pretend play are interest-
ing. One study examined trends over a 23-year period in pretend
play among 610-year-old children (Russ & Dillon, 2011). The
results showed that the level of imagination exhibited in child-
rens play increased significantly over the period, even though
the children had less time to play. Whether or not this change
over time was associated with greater creativity was not clear.

other effects of play

In addition to fostering creativity, play can also enhance child-

rens cognitive ability. The role of play in problem-solving was
studied in 35-year-old children (Sylva, Bruner & Genova, 1976).
The children were given opportunities to play with sticks and
clamps and were subsequently asked to retrieve a desirable
object (a piece of coloured chalk) that was placed too far away
to be reached by hand. They were compared with a group of
children who had observed adults clamping sticks together and
a group that had no experience of playing with the objects or
seeing adults doing it. The results showed that playing with the
objects, or watching adults using them, affected the childrens
problem-solving. Significantly more children in the group that
had played spontaneously with the objects learned to solve the
problem, compared with the no-treatment group. Children in
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Playfulness and education 95

the play group did not differ from the children who had been
shown the principle by adults, but their problem-solving
method was different. The children who had played with the
objects initially tried to reach the chalk with one stick and, after
failing, they clamped the sticks together to make a longer stick
that enabled them to retrieve the chalk. In contrast, the group
that had only watched the adults solve the problem were less
systematic and more inflexible in their problem-solving. In
addition, the children who had played with the objects were
more motivated than the children in the two comparison
groups and less frustrated by failure. The evidence suggests
that playing can improve aspects of childrens problem-solving
and motivation, at least in the short term.
A meta-analysis of 46 published studies found that the
amount that children played was correlated with their skills in
language and cognition and their relationships with other peo-
ple (Fisher, 1992). Especially clear links with cognitive and
social abilities were found for play involving the acting-out of
scenes from cartoons or books, in which the children adopted
roles or gave roles to dolls or puppets. Suggestive though this
evidence is, the causal link between play and other behavioural
characteristics was not established. Many other factors, such as
the home environment, could have independently affected
both playfulness and cognitive development.

playfulness and education

Children may learn directly through play. But play and playful-
ness can also contribute indirectly to more conventional forms
of learning. Academic achievement may be fostered by motivat-
ing pupils through a variety of activities that introduce an
element of play into what might otherwise be regarded as
serious work. The value of creating a playful learning environ-
ment is increasingly emphasised by many writers (e.g. Bergen,
2009; Kangas, 2010). Asian educationalists who are concerned
about the excessive formality of school teaching have been
moving in this direction. Others in the West have capitalised
on pupils familiarity with social media and computer games to
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96 Childhood play and creativity

help them compose more imaginative work (Colby & Colby,

2008). Students have been encouraged to move from small-
scale personal projects to large-scale projects by working play-
fully with others in a virtual world. Although the use of such
approaches to enhance creativity seems intuitively the right
way to go, judgement about the academic and social benefits
must await further research.
In contrast to the use of playful approaches in education,
concerns have been expressed about children spending too much
time watching videos and television, often at the expense of
playing socially or physically. A study of 400 stories written by
36 children aged 1012 years concluded that watching television
and videos is more likely to stifle than to stimulate childrens
imagination (Belton, 2001). Teresa Belton recognised that tele-
vision does have the potential to stimulate childrens imaginative
thinking, and she provided good examples of where it had done
so. The potential was seldom realised, however. The childrens
own direct experience proved more salient for their story-
making. It seems that bombardment with mediated images and
ideas robs children of the opportunity to devise their own activ-
ities and develop their own thought processes  which is often
best done through play. The more general point about playful
approaches to education was made strongly in a report by the
UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST, 2000).
It concluded that well-resourced pre-schools that encourage
the development of emotional, cognitive and social skills and
feelings of self-efficacy, through natural activities such as play
and exploration, result in lasting social and educational benefits.
The benefits are especially valuable for children from deprived
backgrounds.

sensitive periods

Particular skills or types of knowledge tend to be acquired most

readily at particular stages in development. A familiar example
of a sensitive period for learning is the development of lan-
guage. Children who have been massively deprived of social
contact and then rescued show remarkable resilience, and yet
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Sensitive periods 97

the difficulty of learning language at a later age than normal

often proves one of their greatest stumbling blocks. An accent
derived from childhood experience is particularly difficult to
lose in a newly acquired second language, and some vowel and
consonant sounds in the new language may not be recognised at
all (Bateson & Martin, 1999). A number of important conclu-
sions have emerged from studies of sensitive periods for learn-
ing. The developmental processes that make learning easier at
the beginning of a sensitive period are often linked to the stage
of the childs development. This point has relevance for the
timing of childrens education, where earlier does not necessa-
rily mean better.
There is no convincing evidence to suggest that teaching
children reading, writing and mathematics before about the age
of 6 years is advantageous (POST, 2000). The POST report argued
that a slightly later school starting age of 6 or 7 years might be
preferable, provided that it was preceded by high-quality pre-
school provision. Nonetheless, an emphasis on acquiring the
3Rs (reading, riting and rithmetic) at an early age is increas-
ingly common in the UK (Anning, 2010). Children in the UK are
placed in a classroom regime at an earlier age than is usual in
other European countries, although formal teaching starts early
in China. Do children benefit in the long run from starting
schooling at the age of four? The educationalist Janet Moyles
(2010) argued forcefully that they do not. Indeed, some evidence
suggests that teaching these skills at too early an age may
increase childrens anxiety and diminish their motivation to
learn (Elkind, 2008).
As in all prescriptions, one size does not fit all. Some
children develop much more rapidly than others and educa-
tional practices should be sufficiently flexible to allow for
such differences. In her review of the early years foundations
for life, health and learning in the UK, Clare Tickell (2012)
recommended that the bureaucratic rules should be made
much less burdensome in order to encourage greater flexibility,
and the formal targets for early years education should be
reduced fourfold. Among other things, she also recommended
that play should be recognised as an important part of teaching
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98 Childhood play and creativity

and learning, reinforcing what had been emphasised in a much

earlier report by Bridget Plowden (1967).

concerns about lack of play

A growing concern expressed by many writers in economically

developed countries is that children may be disadvantaged by
being deprived of opportunities for certain forms of play expe-
rience (Palmer, 2006; Ward, 2012). Doubtless it was common-
place for children in earlier centuries, or currently in
impoverished parts of the world, to be deprived of play, but in
more affluent times or nations it is feared that opportunities for
play are diminishing.
These concerns about a decline in play are supported by a
considerable body of empirical evidence. When contemporary
childrens experiences of outdoor play in the UK were compared
with their parents accounts of their own childhood, the chil-
dren were found to play much less outdoors and were much
more likely to play in their homes (Valentine & McKendrick,
1997). In a similar study in the USA, 830 mothers nationwide
were asked about their own play experiences as children, as
well as their childrens play experiences (Clements, 2004). The
children were reported to spend considerably less time playing
outdoors than their mothers had done as children. Even allow-
ing for distortions in parental memories of an imagined golden
childhood, the evidence for a decline in the opportunity to play
freely outside is strong (Gleave, 2009). The most significant
influences on childrens access to independent play are parental
anxieties about safety, and dependence on television and digital
media, rather than the provision of public play facilities.
Parental anxieties about safety and time spent watching TV
are themselves connected, as shown by another study in
which children who lived in neighbourhoods that were per-
ceived by their mothers as unsafe were found to watch more
television (Burdette & Whitaker, 2005).
Parental concerns about childrens security have led to
changes in the nature of childhood, with unintended conse-
quences. The tendency of some parents to misjudge risks and
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Concerns about lack of play 99

overprotect their offspring from all sorts of real and largely

imagined dangers may have adverse implications for their
childrens psychological and physical well-being (Furedi, 2001;
Martin, 2005; Murrin & Martin, 2004). Once-common activities
such as roaming freely with friends, or even walking unescorted
to and from school, are becoming increasingly rare experiences
for young children in the UK. It is widely believed that children
should not be left on their own outside, and the activities of
many children are closely monitored to ensure they do not
come to harm. Alternatively, they are encouraged to stay at
home. The unintended consequences can include having
fewer opportunities to learn how to interact effectively with
other children, deal with aggression, cross busy roads, function
independently, or manage everyday risks. Depriving children of
opportunities for free play also deprives them of opportunities
for physical exercise, making them more susceptible to becom-
ing obese and unfit.
To make matters worse, the time available for free play in
schools has also been steadily eroding (Blatchford & Baines,
2006; Pellegrini, 2009). Stricter codes about safety have ren-
dered school playgrounds less physically challenging and inter-
esting (Copeland et al., 2012). Financial constraints may limit a
schools ability to install the best playground equipment. Some
parents, concerned about potential injury or upset from rough-
and-tumble play, have even requested school staff to restrict
their childrens playground activities. Furthermore, those with
responsibility for pre-school children feel pressure from
parents to provide more structured teaching at the expense of
opportunities for unstructured play. Scheduled playtime is
increasingly squeezed by the pressures of an expanding curric-
ulum, competitive league tables and the demands of parents.
The reduction in breaks or recesses during the school day
has many potentially adverse consequences for children
(Blatchford & Baines, 2006). They have less opportunity to
meet and play with their friends. This is even more important
when children are less likely to meet after school because of
parental concerns about safety or, in many cases, larger distan-
ces between schools and homes. Cutting down on free time may
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100 Childhood play and creativity

also be counterproductive from an educational standpoint,

because children are unable to maintain their concentration
for too long without a break.
Some writers have perceived particularly dire consequen-
ces from the reduction in childrens experiences of playing
freely outdoors with other children. For example, the psychol-
ogist Peter Gray (2011) has suggested that the decline in such
experience could explain why anxiety, depression, suicide, feel-
ings of helplessness, and narcissism have increased among chil-
dren, adolescents and young adults. He has argued that play
functions as the major means by which children develop intrin-
sic interests and competencies, learn how to make decisions,
solve problems, exert self-control, learn to regulate their emo-
tions, make friends, learn to get along with others as equals, and
experience joy. Other authors have made similarly strong
claims about the benefits of play and the loss to children from
being deprived of it. For instance, Stuart Brown (2009) has
argued that play stimulates the imagination and invigorates
the soul, making life meaningful, fulfilling and worthwhile.
Brown and other play enthusiasts may well be right, but the
empirical evidence is rarely as strong as the assertions. What is
striking, however, is how scores for creative thought have
declined in recent years, as measured by the Torrance test
(Kim, 2011). Analysis of the normative data for the USA from
1966 to 2008 showed that creative thinking scores remained
static or decreased, starting at around 1112 years of age. Since
1990, creative thinking scores have significantly decreased,
with the biggest decline in children aged up to around 9 years.
If opportunities for playfulness are linked to creativity, this
trend indicates that those who are concerned about the advent
of what Sue Palmer (2006) calls a toxic childhood are right to
worry.

alternative ways of developing

Even if children are playing less, or playing differently, com-

pared with the past, they may compensate in other ways, as we
suggested might be possible in Chapter 3. Alternative modes of
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Alternative ways of developing 101

development might lead to the same outcome in adulthood.

Such a possibility would argue against the strong claims of
some play enthusiasts. It would also bring comfort to the
many parents who have good cause to worry about the safety
of their children, given the vast increases in road traffic.
Whatever the costs, they feel justified in restricting their child-
rens freedom to roam. Their children might play beneficially
inside their homes and interact playfully with their peers via
social media. When they are not playing, children at home
might gain intellectually from their access to the internet,
social media, television and computer games. What they lose
in one way, children might gain in another way. Average scores
of IQ in many countries have tended to rise in the second half of
the twentieth century (Flynn, 1987). The intelligence quotient
or IQ is a measure of cognitive capacity. It is most strongly
linked to analytical ability and a convergent mentality and not
so strongly related to a creative divergent mentality.
Tempering the optimistic view that children find alterna-
tive forms of healthy development, some evidence suggests that
the trend towards increased IQ has recently reversed in Western
countries (Teasdale & Owen, 2008). At the same time, as we have
already noted, a decrease in scores for creative thinking has also
been reported (Kim, 2011). These discouraging recent trends have
been interpreted in terms of changes in educational prac-
tice, particularly in the USA (Bronson & Merryman, 2010). Or
they may result from decreased opportunities for free play.
Whatever the explanation, the hoped-for benefits of an alterna-
tive experience of childhood do not seem to have materialised.
A different type of childhood is likely to lead to a different
type of adult. Much has been made of the different styles of
education in East Asia and the West (Kim, 2005). In Asia the
emphasis has been on disciplined acquisition of knowledge. In
the West, educational practices have been more conducive
to enabling creativity, at least in the relatively recent past.
But differences between East and West have been disappearing.
As we have already noted, pressures on school curricula have
contributed to fewer opportunities for play by children in
the West. If our thesis is correct, then the loss of time for
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102 Childhood play and creativity

playing is likely to have contributed to the observed decline in

creative thought.

conclusions

Obtaining good evidence about the effects of childhood play on

creativity is not easy. Devising control procedures for experi-
mental play interventions is difficult, and guarding against the
inadvertent favouring of children who receive more play expe-
rience requires special precautions. Nonetheless, the increas-
ingly sophisticated research in this area suggests that some
types of play do boost creativity. We are impressed by evidence
of short-term links between play in childhood and creativity.
Creativity, we believe, can be fostered by some aspects of play,
particularly playful play. Some evidence suggests that these
benefits may persist, although more research is needed.
The long-term effects of different types of childhood expe-
rience remain uncertain. But the overall picture suggests that
those who determine the shape of education have much to gain
from fostering a positive, playful mood in the learning environ-
ment. Playfulness can enhance childrens motivation so that
they remain interested in a task, rather than getting frustrated
and giving up. The adverse consequences of reducing opportu-
nities for physical play and unsupervised social play may
include impaired physical fitness, obesity, reduced sociality
and reduced creativity. Our focus has been on creativity, but
childrens experience of play is of course likely to affect other
attributes, such as their ability to communicate and form suc-
cessful relationships with other people. All these consequences
of childhood play are, in turn, likely to affect the cognitive and
social styles, and ultimate well-being, of adults.
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9
Humour and playfulness

Humorous people often behave playfully and playful peo-

ple tend to have a good sense of humour. At face value, play and
humour are connected. Further consideration reveals some
shared underlying features. Play and humour both occur in
protected contexts, where the rules of engagement are some-
how different from serious behaviour. They are both intrinsi-
cally motivating and enjoyable for their own sake. They are
both accompanied, at least in some instances, by a distinctive
positive mood. And they both involve combining things in
unusual ways. Like play, humour is associated with the gener-
ation of novel and occasionally fruitful ideas and therefore can
be highly creative.
Charles Darwin (1877) saw the connection between
humour and play when he kept careful notes on the develop-
ment of his first child, William Erasmus. Like many parents
before him and since, he found that the game of peek-a-boo
generated great amusement and laughter-like gurgling in his
child. He wrote: I was at first surprised at humour being appre-
ciated by an infant only a little above three months old, but we
should remember how very early puppies and kittens begin to
play. The educational psychologist Nina Lieberman (1977), who
worked on creativity in schoolchildren, also saw a link between
humour and playfulness. Indeed, she used humour as part of
her definition of playfulness in the children she studied.
In yet another parallel with play, humour is notoriously
difficult to define and has spawned a large and often speculative

103
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104 Humour and playfulness

literature on its nature and function. The defining features of

humour have been hard to pin down, in much the same way as
biologists and psychologists have struggled to define play. Like
play, humour comes in many different forms, such as puns,
jokes, riddles, satire, farce, caricature, slapstick and cartoons.
To add to the complexity, individuals and cultures differ in what
they find funny, and some forms of humour may be specific to a
particular time and place. Nonetheless, most humour does
seem to have certain underlying features, such as the use of
exaggeration or incongruity, in which ideas are suddenly juxta-
posed in surprising ways. What, then, is the nature of the
relationship between play, playfulness, humour and creativity?

jokes

Jokes are a particular form of humour. They come in many

different shapes and can be highly specific to a particular con-
text. Whether or not a joke is funny depends on the social
context and how it is told (Forabosco, 1992). What many jokes
have in common, however, is an element of surprise or incon-
gruity. They work because they involve ideas that run against
expectations, often because of a mismatch between setting the
scene and the resolution. The humour lies in the surprise gen-
erated by the punch line. Surprise alone is not sufficient; it may
even be alarming. Rather, it is the juxtaposition of an expect-
ation and a surprise that is relevant to that expectation. Here is
an example that won a competition, run by Richard Wiseman
and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, to
find the worlds most popular joke:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He
doesnt seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy
whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, My
friend is dead! What can I do? The operator says Calm down. I can help.
First, lets make sure hes dead. There is a silence, then a shot is heard.
Back on the phone, the guy says OK, now what?26

The organisers of the competition commented that jokes some-

times make people feel superior to others, reduce the emotional
impact of anxiety-provoking events, or surprise them. The
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What generates humour? 105

hunter joke was thought to contain all three elements. The

reader feels superior to the stupid hunter, appreciates the
humour in his misunderstanding of the operator, and is sur-
prised by the punch line. That said, the slightly feeble nature of
the worlds most popular joke may represent the lowest com-
mon denominator of people from widely differing backgrounds
and cultures, as the organisers noted themselves.

what generates humour?

One long-established view about the nature of humour is that it

involves bringing together ideas from widely differing contexts
to produce a surprising and incongruous combination. The
parallel with play is clear. As Arthur Koestler (1964) put it,
humour results when two different frames of reference are set
up and a collision is generated between them. Not all humour
relies on surprise or incongruity, and some examples may
amuse despite having been repeated many times. Even so,
much humour does result from the unexpected relevance of a
surprising combination  the detection of incongruity followed
by its resolution. The concept of incongruity refers to the rela-
tionship between the components of an object, event, idea,
social expectation, and so forth. When the arrangement of the
components is incompatible with the normal or expected pat-
tern, the situation is perceived as incongruous (McGee, 1979).
The hypothesis here is that people find funny the things that
surprise them because they seem out of place: they leap to an
interpretation on the basis of previous experience that is shown
by subsequent information to be wrong.
The Russian physicist Igor Suslov (1992) argued that some
forms of humour  particularly puns and verbal jokes  work by
drawing people into error. They are led to believe one thing, but
then realise they are wrong. Humour, he argued, is a rapid
emotional response that makes people aware of their initial
mistake, which they then correct. Suslovs theory is consistent
with some common features of humour  notably, that timing is
important and hackneyed old jokes generally cease to be funny.
If the timing is wrong or the joke is too familiar, people are not
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106 Humour and playfulness

lured into making the initial error. The theory once again high-
lights the importance of incongruity.

humour and laughter

Humour is often associated with laughter, but the two are dis-
tinctly different. Laughter is by no means synonymous with
humour; indeed, it is sometimes associated with moods and
situations that are far from light-hearted or humorous
(Provine, 2012).
The stereotypical vocal patterns associated with human
laughter emerge early in development, at 23 months of age.
In very young children, laughter is evoked most easily by tick-
ling. Robert Provine (2000) has argued that the ha-ha vocal-
isation of laughter has ancient biological origins, evolving from
the pant-pant vocalisations present in the rough-and-tumble
play of chimpanzees. The 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalisations pro-
duced when rats engage in rough-and-tumble play has also been
regarded as a precursor of human laughter (Panksepp, 2007).
This response can be evoked by tickling rats, especially in areas
such as the nape of the neck. Analysis of the rats behaviour
indicates that these laughter-like high-frequency vocalisations
are emitted in positive, playful social situations. In rats, these
vocalisations are produced by subcortical structures (Panksepp,
2007). Robert Provine (2012) has suggested that human laughter
is also generated at the subcortical level of brain organisation
and that the precursors of laughter evolved a long time ago.
The link between tickling and laughter has also been proposed
as an important step in the evolution of humour (Gervais &
Wilson, 2005).
Human laughter is primarily a social response: it is 30
times more frequent in social than in solitary situations
(Provine, 2012). Laughter can be contagious  laughter causes
laughter. But laughing with someone is very different from
laughing at them. Laughter can be used aggressively to deride,
dominate or taunt. People also laugh when they are nervous,
excited or tense, and laughter can signify anxiety or submission.
The quality of laughter varies and differences are readily
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Humour and well-being 107

detected in analysis of the sounds produced (Kipper & Todt,

2005). The particular sound can indicate to the listener whether
the intentions of the person who is laughing are friendly or not.
Laughter, then, is a form of social communication with
many different functions and it occurs in many contexts other
than ones associated with humour. It follows that humour is not
best judged solely by whether it produces laughter. We accept,
of course, that laughter can be an expression of elevated, pos-
itive mood. It can also be a signal that what is about to come is
not to be taken seriously, in a clear parallel with play signals
such as the play-face in chimpanzees.

humour as a signal

Just as friendly laughter can signal that what is about to be said

is not malign, the truth can be spoken in jest when it is implic-
itly understood that the intent is not to wound. This ability of
humour to create a sort of protected context was formalised in
the practice of employing court jesters or fools in royal courts
from the Egyptian Pharaohs to those of European monarchs of
the Middle Ages. The jesters and fools were able to say things
that others could not. As in play, the context was protected.
Their licence to mock playfully meant they could humorously
dispense unwelcome truths and frank good sense. They could
bring bad news to the king that no one else would dare deliver.
For instance, when the French fleet was destroyed by the
English at the Battle of Sluys in 1340, Philippe VIs jester told
him that the English sailors dont even have the guts to jump
into the water like our brave French (Otto, 2001). The behaviour
of fools and jesters provides another parallel between humour
and play. In both cases they occur in a protected context in
which the behaviour is insulated from its normal consequences.

humour and well-being

The ability to see the funny or absurd side of life relieves tension
and helps people to cope with stress. The relatively few scien-
tific studies that have delved into this area have found that
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108 Humour and playfulness

humour has a range of psychological and physiological benefits,

with no known harmful side-effects. Inducing enjoyment
through humour can temporarily reduce stress levels and
boost certain aspects of the immune system, potentially making
people more resistant to infection and disease (Bennett et al.,
2003; Martin, 1997).
Humour has practical benefits too. Humour in the work-
place is found to be correlated with better working relation-
ships, greater job satisfaction, increased productivity and a
lower turnover of staff (Morrison, 2004). In his discussion of
present-day hunter-gatherers, Peter Gray (2009) argued that
they use humour, deliberately, to maintain equality and stop
quarrels. Gray regarded their playfulness as crucial to maintain-
ing social cohesion. Humour helps to build and maintain rela-
tionships, as well as making individuals more resilient. As such,
it is one of factors that contribute to happiness (Martin, 2005).

humour and playfulness

Inasmuch as humour is original, its production is a creative act.

When psychologists have analysed the relationship between
creativity and humour, incongruity emerges again as a core
theme (Murdock & Ganim, 1993). A clear link can be seen with
playful play, where creativity is fostered by generating novel
combinations of acts or ideas, accompanied by a positive mood
that facilitates divergent thinking. Those who generate humour
often do so playfully. To give just one example, David Jones,
under his pen name of Daedulus, wrote more than 2,000 whim-
sical articles for New Scientist magazine, the Guardian newspaper
and the journal Nature. His creativity, which built on his knowl-
edge of science, was astonishing. In writing about this in his
book The Aha! Moment, Jones (2012) frequently referred to the
playfulness involved in creating the humorous scenarios.
Some evidence suggests that more creative people are bet-
ter able to generate humour. In two separate studies, students
were asked to supply captions to cartoons (Brodzinsky & Rubien,
1976; Treadwell, 1970). Their creativity was also assessed using
Mednicks (1968) Remote Associates Test, which we described in
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Conclusions 109

Chapter 5, where the task is to identify a word that connects

three seemingly unrelated words. The students who performed
well on this test also produced the most humorous cartoon
captions. A more recent study with 86 adults also found a positive
association between creativity and humour (Humke & Schaefer,
1996). Humour might be correlated with creativity, but can the
use of humour actually enhance creativity? One project aimed to
enhance creativity in adolescents by exposing them to humorous
stories (Ziv, 1989). The adolescents did become more creative
relative to a comparison group when measured on a standard
test of originality. The effect was probably short-lived and may
have relied on the ability of humour to elevate mood. Whether
humour can have more lasting effects on creativity remains
uncertain  though it is certainly plausible because humour,
like play, can help people to see the world in new ways.
In their extensive review of the evolution and functions of
humour, Hurley, Dennett and Adams (2011) consider its link
with play. They approve of Ramachandrans (1998) theory that
tickling is a form of play and that laughter evolved from being
tickled. In non-human species, tickling and chasing in social
play involve peaks of excitement by the tickled or the chased.
The conflict between a potentially aggressive act and its non-
aggressive outcome is resolved. That happy state of resolving
conflicting emotions might have provided the conditions nec-
essary for the evolution of the appreciation of humour when
incongruities are resolved.

conclusions

Like others, we doubt that a single underlying theme can

explain humour, just as a single theme does not capture the
entirety of play. Even so, the commonalities between playful
play and the generation of humour are striking. They both
encourage a positive, light-hearted mood among participants.
They both occur in protected contexts where the normal con-
sequences of the behaviour are disregarded. They are both
intrinsically motivated and rewarding in their own right. And
they both generate novel outcomes that can lead to creativity.
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10
Dreams, drugs and creativity

Dreaming, like humour, has a number of features in com-

mon with play. It occurs in a protected context and combines
existing thoughts into novel combinations, potentially provid-
ing a safe way to discover new connections and possibilities.
Dreaming has been linked explicitly to creativity; many writers,
artists, musicians and even some scientists have claimed that
good ideas came to them in the course of dreaming (Martin,
2002). Other states of consciousness besides dreaming and
wakefulness may also be occasional sources of new ideas. In
this chapter we look at dreaming, daydreaming and the altered
mental states induced by alcohol and other psychoactive drugs.
We consider their relationship with play and their influence on
creativity. Strong claims have been made by some creative
people about their enhanced ability to come up with good
ideas when in such states (Martin, 2008).

dreams

Everybody dreams but most people rapidly forget their dreams

when they wake up. When dreams are remembered, they are
found to consist of familiar thoughts, images and memories
mixed together in unusual and sometimes bizarre ways
(Martin, 2002). A person may attempt to make sense of these
novel sequences and, in so doing, generate something that is
genuinely creative. As Arthur Koestler (1964) described it, links
are forged between disparate things that would never be

110
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Dreams 111

connected when awake. People who would not consider them-

selves especially creative can be remarkably good at producing
novel ideas when they dream, and some of these ideas can be
harnessed in waking life. As with play, most of the novel combi-
nations are of no practical use, but once in a while something
genuinely interesting emerges. It is also worth remembering
that dreaming occupies a remarkably large slice of human exis-
tence. By the time someone dies, he or she may have spent in
total around 25 years asleep, of which several years will have
been in the dream state (Martin, 2002).
In many of his writings, the psychologist Nicholas
Humphrey (1983, 1986, 1992, 2000, 2007) has argued that
dreaming brings substantial benefits in addition to those arising
from memory consolidation and recovery from fatigue. His
theme is that dreams often place the individual in situations
that he or she has never previously encountered but might
encounter at a future date. To use the term that we have applied
to play behaviour, dreaming is a form of safe simulation. The
experience of dreaming provides the dreamer with mental
skills that might become useful later on. Humphrey explicitly
drew a link between play and dreaming. He suggested that the
individual is introduced to introspectively observable mental
states that are as yet unfamiliar in real life. In this way, dream-
ing may allow imagined experiences that are beyond the scope
of waking play. Developing this idea, Humphrey (2000) specu-
lated that dreaming gives the individual the chance to discover
what it is like to be the subject of strange but humanly signifi-
cant mental states. In a similar vein, Revonsuo (2000) suggested
that dreaming simulates threatening events, enabling the indi-
vidual to discover what it is like to perceive threat and to
rehearse ways of avoiding such threats.
In line with this thinking, many claims have been made
that dreams have inspired creative individuals and enabled
them to generate new ideas (Barrett, 2001; Martin, 2002). The
surreal paintings of Salvador Dali have an explicitly dream-like
quality, and Dali certainly believed that dreams inspired his
work. Film-makers such as Ingmar Bergmann and Federico
Fellini turned their own dream images into film sequences.
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112 Dreams, drugs and creativity

Paul McCartney heard the melody of Yesterday in a dream and

initially could not believe that it was a new melody rather than
a memory of someone elses song. Other well-documented
examples of creative solutions arising from dreams include
Dmitri Mendeleyevs categorisation of chemical elements,
Elias Howes invention of the sewing machine, and Herman
Hilprechts deciphering of ancient Babylonian hieroglyphs
(Van de Castle, 1994). While these accounts are anecdotal,
empirical research has demonstrated a systematic relationship
between dreaming and creativity.
The dreams of creative people contain a higher proportion
of unusual combinations (Domino, 1976), a reminder that
dreaming, like play, involves the generation of novel combina-
tions. More generally, creativity is associated with having lon-
ger and more frequent dreams (Blagrove & Hartnell, 2000;
Livingston & Levin, 1991; Schredl, 1995). Whether in such stud-
ies dreaming influenced creativity, or creativity affected dream-
ing, or another unknown factor influenced both, could not be
determined. However, direct evidence of a link between dream-
ing and subsequent creativity came from a substantial retro-
spective study (Schredl & Erlacher, 2007). The results, derived
from a specially designed questionnaire, indicated that about
8% of all remembered dreams led to subsequent creativity in
waking life. The examples were of four main types:

* dream images that were used in later work

* dreams that solved a problem
* dreams that provided the impetus to do something the individual
otherwise had difficulty doing
* dreams containing emotional insights.

The main factors influencing the frequency of creative dreams

were the frequency of dream recall and the openness of the
individual to new experiences. Such evidence supports the
anecdotal accounts of many individuals that dreaming has
helped them to solve problems and discover new ideas.
Creative dreaming is especially associated with the dreams
that occur during the transition between wakefulness and sleep
(known as hypnagogic dreams) and those occurring during
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Dreams 113

the comparable transition from sleep to wakefulness (Martin,

2002). During these sleepwake transitions, dream-like
thoughts can become loosely associated, whimsical, and even
bizarre. Hallucinations are common and may take the form of
flashes of light or colour, sounds, voices, faces, or fully formed
pictures. Mental imagery may become particularly vivid and
fantastical, and a few individuals may experience synaesthesia,
in which stimulation of one of the senses is experienced in
another. The novel experiences and hallucinations arising dur-
ing this altered state of consciousness are also more likely to be
remembered and carried across into the waking state than
dreams occurring in deep sleep.
Of the many examples of creativity arising from hypnagogic
dreams, one of the most famous is that of August Kekule· von
Stradonitz (182996), the discoverer of the chemical structure of
the benzene ring. His theory proved to be so important that in
1890 the German Chemical Society organised a celebration in
Kekule·s honour. At the celebration, Kekule· gave a speech
describing how the theory came to him. He said he hit upon the
ring shape of the benzene molecule after falling half asleep by
the fireside and having a dream in which a snake seized its own
tail (Benfey, 1958). It is possible, through attention and practice,
for individuals to become more aware of the hypnagogic state as
it occurs and to experience and remember their dreams more
fully. The writer Robert Louis Stevenson deliberately cultivated
hypnagogic dreaming in this way in order to generate new ideas
for his stories; one of the best known being The Strange Case of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Martin, 2002).
Lucid dreaming is a particular form of dreaming in which
the dreamer becomes aware at the time that they are dreaming
(Hearne, 1990; LaBerge et al., 1981; Martin, 2002). The dreamer
may also be able to exert some degree of control over the content
of the dream (Fenwick et al., 1984). Lucid dreaming, like other
forms of dreaming, is linked to creativity. The most creative
student subjects in one study were significantly more likely to
have lucid dreams than the less creative individuals (Blagrove &
Hartnell, 2000). In his book on sleep, Martin (2002) described
many examples of lucid dreaming and how this ability can be
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114 Dreams, drugs and creativity

developed with practice. One particularly remarkable example

was that of Hervey de Saint-Denys, a nineteenth-century French
scholar who developed his lucid dreaming ability to such an
extent that he could probe long-forgotten memories and con-
jure up all manner of pleasurable dream experiences. The mem-
ories he explored during his lucid dreams could be rearranged
into new sequences that were in every sense creative. This rear-
rangement to form something new is analogous to what happens
with play.

daydreaming

Daydreaming, which occurs during waking consciousness, is a

distinctly different state from dream sleep. Nonetheless, it does
have certain features in common with both dreaming and play
and, like them, it can facilitate creativity.
In the absence of a task that requires deliberative process-
ing, the mind tends to wander, flitting from one thought to
another with fluidity and ease  a generally pleasurable state
commonly known as daydreaming. Someone who is daydream-
ing may be pondering on a particular theme, or their thoughts
may meander randomly. Either way, their thinking is not
focused on the current situation or the task in hand and, as
such, it could be regarded as a waste of time. In this sense,
daydreaming is analogous to play and contrasts with serious
problem-solving cognition. In terms of creativity, the daydream
may lead the thinker further afield and enable them to stumble
across new connections. When stuck on a particularly difficult
problem, indulging in a good daydream isnt just an escape  it
may be the most productive thing to do.
Some argue that daydreaming is a valuable tool for crea-
tivity, precisely because of its ability to make new associations
and connections. Instead of focusing on the immediate sur-
roundings, the daydreamer is free to engage in abstract thought
and imaginative ramblings, picturing the future, and contem-
plating what-if scenarios without constraints. In yet another
parallel with play, the seemingly frivolous wandering of the
mind could have serious benefits. One possible function of
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Creativity and alcohol 115

daydreaming is to plan and anticipate personally relevant

future goals (Baird, Smallwood & Schooler, 2011). In line with
this hypothesis, the content of daydreams is predominantly
future-focused and is often useful to people later on, as they
navigate through their daily lives. According to this view, day-
dreaming is an adaptive feature of the human mind and, like
play, has potentially significant benefits that may accrue after a
long delay.
Daydreaming is accompanied by a distinct pattern of brain
activity. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows
that during daydreaming simultaneous activation occurs of
regions of the brain that ordinarily are not strongly connected,
facilitating communication between them. When deprived of
varying sensory input, this network of different brain regions is
brought together (Mason et al., 2007). The network of brain
regions that become connected during daydreaming is most
engaged when people are performing tasks that require little
conscious attention. It has been suggested that creativity is
enhanced in this state because the simultaneous activation of
different brain areas enables people to understand and express
novel orderly relationships (Heilman, Nadeau & Beversdorf,
2003). As in play, different ideas or ways of doing things may
be brought together creatively.

creativity and alcohol

Another, distinctly different, way in which most humans expe-

rience altered states of consciousness is through their use of
psychoactive drugs. In many societies, the most commonly used
and publicly acceptable psychoactive drug  besides caffeine  is
alcohol (Martin, 2008). Alcohol has been widely consumed in
many cultures throughout human history. Wine was being
made in the region of modern-day Armenia eight thousand
years ago, long before the wheel was invented; and the
Egyptians were drinking wine and beer six thousand years
ago. Humanitys ancient and sometimes troubled relationship
with alcohol revolves around its psychoactive properties. As
Hugh Johnson (1989) acknowledged in his history of wine: It
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116 Dreams, drugs and creativity

was not the subtle bouquet of wine, or a lingering aftertaste of

violets and raspberries, that first caught the attention of our
ancestors. It was, Im afraid, its effect. Humans like to consume
alcohol because it makes them feel different. Moderate doses
can induce a pleasant state of relaxation and reduced anxiety.
Larger doses produce intoxication, with potentially dramatic
mental and physical effects. Intoxication is not just about feel-
ing good; it can be about taking a short break from sober
normality (Martin, 2008).
Alcohol has featured prominently in the lives of many
creative people (Beveridge & Yorston, 1999). Among the writers
who famously consumed a lot were Dylan Thomas, Brendan
Behan, James Joyce, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Eugene ONeill, Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac. Visual
artists who drank included Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch,
Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and
Amedeo Modigliani. The rock musician drinkers are too numer-
ous to mention.
Many creative people drink a lot of alcohol, but does their
drinking make them more creative? Two clinicians who sur-
veyed this field concluded that: If one is struck by the large
number of artists who drank to excess, one is also struck by the
appalling personal and physical price they paid. In fact, most
artists who have experimented with creating while under the
influence of alcohol have concluded that it hinders rather than
aids the artistic process (Beveridge & Yorston, 1999). On the
other hand, many creative people clearly believe that alcohol
has helped them to be more creative by giving them different
experiences, dissociating them from everyday life and enabling
them to think more deeply (Koski-Jnnes, 1985). Some experi-
mental evidence suggests that this belief has a basis in reality.
In one experimental study, which looked at a sample of
scientists, mild alcohol intoxication made them significantly
more creative and original in their thinking about science,
affecting the incubation phase of their creativity (Norlander &
Gustafson, 1998). By altering peoples cognitive style, alcohol
can make them temporarily less inhibited and less tied to
rational and constrained ways of thinking (Gustafson &
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Other drugs 117

Kallmen, 1989). Alcohol releases the shackles of conventional-

ity. As William James (1902) observed, Sobriety diminishes,
discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and
says yes.27
The relationship between alcohol and creativity is cer-
tainly not straightforward, though. In a biographical study of
34 well-known creative people who drank heavily, the data
indicated that alcohol impaired the productivity of three-
quarters of the sample, especially later in life. Even so, on
reflection by the people concerned, alcohol was thought to
have been of direct creative benefit to 9% and indirect benefit
to 50% (Ludwig, 1990). Solid evidence indicates that a small
amount of alcohol can enable people to solve problems that
cannot be solved by those who are sober (Jarosz, Colflesh &
Wiley, 2012). In this study, the effects of moderate alcohol
intoxication were tested with a creative problem-solving
task. Individuals were brought to a blood alcohol content of
approximately 0.75 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood and,
after reaching peak intoxication, completed a battery of test
items. Mildly intoxicated individuals solved more items, and
in less time, than sober individuals. More interestingly still,
they were more likely to perceive their creative solutions as
the result of a sudden insight. The general conclusion from
this and other studies is that moderate doses of alcohol can
facilitate some aspects of creativity in some people, probably
by reducing social inhibitions and enlarging the focus of
attention.

other drugs

Many other psychoactive drugs besides alcohol have been used

to create altered states of consciousness in many cultures for
thousands of years (Martin, 2008). Opium from the poppy,
cocaine from the coca plant, mescaline from the peyote cactus,
ergot from the Claviceps fungi that infect grasses such as rye,
psilocybin from 200 species of Basidiomycota mushrooms, khat
from an Arabian shrub, and many more examples all contain
psychoactive chemicals.
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118 Dreams, drugs and creativity

The nineteenth century witnessed a vogue for experiment-

ing with drugs as tools for exploring the inner workings of the
mind and unleashing its creative potential (Martin, 2008).
Thomas De Quincey described the pleasures and pitfalls of tak-
ing opium in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. The English
romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge also reported the vivid
imagery of the opium experience, and the 1832 poem by Alfred
Lord Tennyson, The lotus-eaters, describes how opium was
used as a creative tool. Charles Baudelaire, who was inspired
by the drug-fuelled works of Coleridge and De Quincey, relates
how he and his friends used opium and hashish to help them
break into unexplored realms of the human imagination and to
view the world in novel ways.
The artistic tradition of using drugs to aid creativity con-
tinued in the twentieth century.28 During the 1960s and 1970s,
a substantial body of Western art and music attributed its crea-
tiveness to psychedelic drugs such as LSD. Some artists and
musicians proclaimed themselves to be psychedelic artists,
while others acknowledged the influence of psychedelic drug
experiences on their work. In the generally more staid realm of
science, LSD was used by the chemist Kary Mullis, who invented
the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This very important proc-
ess, which is used in forensic investigations, amplifies small
pieces of DNA by generating thousands or millions of copies of
the DNA sequences. Mullis was quoted as saying: Would I have
invented PCR if I hadnt taken LSD? I seriously doubt it (see
Mullis, 1998). Whether or not he was right (and he was wrong
about many other matters such his denial of the link between
HIV and AIDS), he went on to win a Nobel Prize for his work.
The influence of LSD on artistic creativity was explored in
a remarkable long-term series of anecdotal case studies by the
American psychiatrist Oscar Janiger. Between 1954 and 1962,
Janiger organised LSD sessions for almost a thousand people
between the ages of 18 and 81 years from a variety of profes-
sions including doctors, lawyers, housewives, police officers,
lorry drivers, students and unemployed and retired people
(Dobkin de Rios & Janiger, 2003). In contrast to the experimental
approaches of many other psychedelic drug studies of this
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Other drugs 119

period, Janigers took place in a naturalistic setting with the aim

of exploring the nature of the intrinsic, characteristic LSD
response. Unsurprisingly, the volunteers experiences varied
widely, but adverse reactions were extremely rare and the vast
majority described the experience as valuable and facilitating
their sense of creativity. Janiger then examined the effects of
LSD on creativity in a more controlled setting. He gave the drug
to a mixed group of 60 visual artists. The artists output of over
250 pictures was later analysed by a professor of art history,
who compared works produced before and after the LSD ses-
sions. The heterogeneity of the population and the value judge-
ments inherent in analysing the art made it impossible to reach
objective conclusions about how LSD affected creativity.
Nonetheless, the drug did appear to enhance certain aspects of
the artists work, with a tendency towards more expressionistic
work and a sharpening of colour. Particularly interesting were
the many qualitative reports from the artists themselves, who,
without exception, reported the LSD experience to be artisti-
cally and personally profound. We accept that they reported
accurately what they felt, but an element of self-justification
and willingness to please the investigators may have been
involved.
In another study, 27 individuals working in professions
that involved some degree of creativity were primed in a pre-
drug session, during which they were encouraged to select
problems of professional interest that required a creative solu-
tion (Harman, McKim & Mogar, 1966). The researchers encour-
aged positive expectations by telling the subjects that the drug
would enhance their creativity and help them to work more
productively without distractions. The subjects were then given
the psychedelic drug mescaline during sessions in which they
were encouraged to work in groups or tackle their chosen
problems individually. Within a week of the drug session, the
subjects submitted a written account of their experience and, in
further interviews 8 weeks later, they were asked how the drug
had affected their creativity and work performance. All the
participants reported that their performance had improved. In
their written accounts they all described how the drug had
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120 Dreams, drugs and creativity

enhanced their creative process. This study was not controlled

for placebo effects and, for that reason, is difficult to evaluate. It
showed how both the mind-set of the subjects and the context
in which the drug is administered can affect experience.29
The psychological experiences of humans under the influ-
ence of psychedelic drugs are multifarious and idiosyncratic,
but a broad range of common characteristics has nevertheless
been identified (Sessa, 2008). These include alterations in the
users emotions, sensory perceptions in all the modalities, and
perception of how different things are related. Two particular
features of the psychedelic experience have special relevance to
the creative process; namely, a general increase in the ability
to deal with complexity, and an increase in openness such that
the usual restraints that encourage humans to accept precon-
ceived ideas are challenged. Another important feature is the
tendency for users to assign unique and novel meanings to their
experience (Sessa, 2008).
Evidence that psychoactive drugs can improve creativity is
often equivocal. The personality of the individual, the circum-
stances in which they take the drug, and many other variables
will influence how they are affected. Conscious expectations
can have substantial effects on the subjective experience.
Someone who is expecting to become more creative because
of a drug may perform better than someone without such
expectations, regardless of any pharmacological effects. The
expectation of a positive outcome can also interact with the
real effects of a drug, amplifying some of its components and
diminishing others.30

conclusions

This chapter has been concerned with the enhanced creativity

that can flow from dreaming and other altered states of con-
sciousness, and the analogies between these states and play. For
some people, and in some contexts, altered states of conscious-
ness do causally influence creativity. Every so often, the link
with play has been explicit, but more often in the extensive
research on dreaming and drugs the emphasis of investigators
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Conclusions 121

has been on experiences that enable people to perceive things

in different ways or connect previously unrelated thoughts.
Here the link with play is analogous. Dreaming and the altered
states of consciousness induced by some psychoactive drugs
occur in protected contexts, in the sense that novel patterns of
thought can occur freely, without their conventional real-life
consequences. In a dream, you can fly or walk through brick
walls without hurting yourself. More importantly, thoughts
may be combined in novel and sometimes fruitful ways.
Research in this field has often focused on relatively short-
term effects on creativity, whereas the work on animal and
human play suggests that the benefits often accrue much
later. Future research could usefully examine whether the
creative benefits of altered states of consciousness, when they
do occur, are long-lasting.31
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11
Pulling the threads together

Our purpose has been to examine whether play, and espe-

cially playful play, enhances creativity and hence innovation. At
the outset we drew a distinction between playful play, in which
the mood is positive, and non-playful play in which the mood is
different. We have argued that play assists creativity by gener-
ating novel combinations of thoughts or actions, or by provid-
ing experience that enables the subsequent production of novel
solutions to problems.
We started with an account of the research on animal play,
considering its organisation, development, function and evolu-
tion. Play is defined by pointing to examples that people readily
recognise. The distinction between play and serious behaviour
may be communicated between players by social signals such as
the play-face. Play involves novel combinations of actions or
thoughts. These actions or thoughts occur outside their usual
context and may be exaggerated. In social play, roles may be
reversed, with the dominant individual handicapping itself.
Play is typically suppressed by illness, anxiety or chronic stress
and is highly sensitive to prevailing conditions. A core feature of
play is its intrinsic motivation: no additional external reward is
required to motivate an individual to play. Playful play is asso-
ciated with a positive, light-hearted mood that facilitates diver-
gent thinking.
Many different types of play occur in animals, as in
humans. Play with objects has different characteristics from
play with peers, both in its structure and when it occurs during

122
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Pulling the threads together 123

development. The distinctiveness of different forms of play has

contributed to the difficulty in defining the unifying character
of play. The playful mood state may bind together different
examples of playful play.
We highlighted the distinction between the motivational
underpinnings of play and its biological functions. Many differ-
ent explanations have been offered for the functions of play.
According to one hypothesis, play enhances an individuals
ability to cooperate, compete and co-exist with members of its
own species, develops social skills, and cements social relation-
ships. Another hypothesis is that play facilitates the acquisition
of complex physical skills by fine-tuning neuromuscular sys-
tems and the processing of sensory information. Other poten-
tial functions include increasing the individuals knowledge of
its home environment, making the individual more resistant to
stress, or enlarging its behavioural repertoire and thereby mak-
ing it better able to adjust to new conditions.
The particular functional hypothesis that we have
explored in this book is that play provides a mechanism for
generating new forms of behaviour or new ideas, enabling the
individual to discover new solutions and ways of breaking out of
a rut. Play, it is argued, equips the individual with experiences
that enable it to meet future challenges in novel ways. These
and other proposed functions are not mutually exclusive, and
different forms of play may bring different biological benefits
during the course of an individuals lifespan. Researchers
attempts to demonstrate that any one of these proposed func-
tions is correct have proved difficult. Nevertheless, evidence
obtained from studying animals does suggest that individuals
who play more are more likely to survive and reproduce.
Before leaving the biology of play, we considered how it
might have evolved. Play has biological costs. A fundamental
tenet of biology is that if an activity carries costs then it must
have evolved because of the benefits it brings. The play activities
of birds and mammals might have had a common evolutionary
origin in reptilian ancestors. Alternatively, play might have
evolved separately in birds and mammals and be related to the
extended parental care found in both. If such care allowed the
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124 Pulling the threads together

young animal to play and exercise, those that did so would be at

an advantage over those that did not. A variety of benefits could
have followed and driven further changes in the course
of evolution. For example, testing the conditions around the
young animal could have led to greater cognitive ability with
more elaborately organised brains. Such behaviour could have
facilitated further creativity and innovation, so driving yet more
evolutionary changes in the descendants of the players. Many or
all of the suggested functions of play may turn out to be real.

solving difficult problems

We described some remarkable instances of birds and non-

human mammals producing creative solutions to difficult prob-
lems. Crows, parrots, dolphins, whales, monkeys and apes
provide the most striking examples of individuals displaying
novel and creative patterns of behaviour. All these animals are
highly playful early in their lives and their early experiences may
have enabled their subsequent creativity.
When it comes to humans, we argued that playful thought
and playful behaviour can assist creativity and hence help indi-
viduals and organisations to be more innovative. Many of the
most creative people in the arts and sciences have been highly
playful and willing to break the rules of conventional behav-
iour. Individuals differ temperamentally, but playfulness and
hence creativity can be encouraged in those who may not see
themselves as being especially creative. Producing creative
ideas does not necessarily lead to successful innovation, how-
ever. Innovation involves transforming creative ideas into prac-
tical outcomes that are adopted by others. Being a successful
innovator requires other attributes, such as analytical skills,
determination and persistence, that are different from the cog-
nitive features underpinning creativity.

loss of play in childhood

Various commentators have expressed increasing concern

that children in developed countries are being deprived of
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Implications for individuals and organisations 125

opportunities to play freely with other children outdoors.

Historical changes in the play experiences of children have
been driven partly by the fears of parents for the safety of
their offspring and by the realities of educational pressures.
Some authorities have been sceptical about the benefits of
unstructured play, believing that it competes with the time
needed to learn the fundamental skills of literacy and numer-
acy. Teaching these skills at too early an age may be a mistake.
When children are ready to learn, playfulness in the classroom
can have major benefits in motivating them. Breaks or recesses
between lessons allow time for play and enable the children to
restore their attention to what they are being taught.
Recent historical changes in childhood experiences have
not been uniformly negative by any means. The potential bene-
fits include enhanced analytical intelligence, a much greater
ability to deal with technology, and the opportunity through
social media to interact with larger networks of individuals. The
downsides include fewer opportunities to engage in physical
activity or interact in person with other children. Efforts to
intervene in childrens experience with the aim of increasing
sociality and creativity have had mixed results, though some
studies have been encouragingly positive. The evidence sug-
gests that play does boost childrens creativity, at least in the
short term. Breaking rules and making new ones is a skill
fostered by play and may help individuals when they are chal-
lenged later in life by circumstances they have not encountered
before. Our focus has been on creativity, but childrens experi-
ence of social play will have more wide-ranging effects on their
ability to form successful relationships with other people later
in life. Play may also affect childrens motivation so that they
remain interested in tasks when others who have had more
limited play experience get frustrated and give up.

implications for individuals and

organisations

The generally positive results of boosting play experiences in

children have implications for adults engaged in creative
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126 Pulling the threads together

activities. They suggest that the creativity of adults, like that of

children, can be enhanced, at least in the short term.
Encouraging playful play in groups  as distinct from
brainstorming and other popular techniques  can help organ-
isations to become more creative and hence more innovative.
One way to encourage the creative process is through
humour. Humour has many facets and we have not done justice
to all of them in this book. Humour and play do, however, have
features in common. They both involve social signals and are
sensitive to prevailing conditions. Humour and playful play are
both associated with a positive, light-hearted mood that facili-
tates divergent thinking (though it remains unclear whether
the mood is exactly the same in both cases). Play and humour
both occur in protected environments and are intrinsically
motivated. Certain forms of humour, in common with play,
rely on generating novel or incongruous combinations of
thoughts. The consequences can be highly creative. These
links between play, playfulness and humour may be more
than mere analogies. Playfulness encourages humour and
humour encourages playfulness.
Dreams can occasionally lead to creative outcomes, as can
daydreaming. Many creative people have used their dreams as
tools to help them discover new ideas. Dreaming, like play,
occurs in a protected state and involves combining familiar
memories, thoughts and ideas in novel ways. Other altered
states of consciousness can be induced by psychoactive drugs
such as alcohol or LSD, and strong claims have been made that
they can enhance creativity. However, evidence that drug-
induced altered states of consciousness do enhance creativity
is often equivocal. The personality of the individual has an
influence on how they are affected and the drug dose can be
crucial. Conscious expectations may interact with the pharma-
cological effects. Despite these caveats, the evidence suggests
that, for some people and in some contexts, drug-induced
altered states of consciousness can causally influence creativity.
After taking a drug, some individuals are able to perceive things
in a different way or connect previously unrelated ideas or
memories. The disinhibiting effects of some psychoactive
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Suggestions for future research 127

drugs may make it easier to form associations between seem-

ingly unrelated thoughts. Furthermore, alcohol and some other
drugs can induce positive moods that assist in social interac-
tions and creative thought. Our suggestions here are expressed
with caution because they could be misinterpreted or might
appear to underplay the harm caused by the abuse of alcohol
and illegal drugs. Nevertheless, allowing time for daydreaming
and paying attention to dreams may lead to greater productivity
in the workplace, and a glass of wine may help to generate the
positive mood and playfulness that we believe are important in
developing new ways of thinking.

suggestions for future research

This book is about ideas drawn from many different strands of

scientific research. A great deal about the biology and psychol-
ogy of play, playfulness and creativity is still poorly understood.
We have attempted, where possible, to base our conclusions on
empirical evidence and have pointed out where evidence is
lacking or incomplete. More research is undoubtedly needed
before confident answers can be given to the following
questions.
1. What is the role of play in the development of complex mental
and physical skills? Is it the best or only way to acquire certain
skills?
2. What are the optimal periods in development for different forms
of play?
3. How does play differ from other forms of behaviour in terms of
its motivation and control?
4. What is the nature of the positive mood associated with playful
play and how does it influence creativity?
5. Do animals that play more have a better knowledge of their
environment than those that play less?
6. Do individuals that play more find globally optimal solutions
more easily than those that play less?
7. What is the neural basis of play and playfulness?
8. Why are some individuals generally more playful than others?
Conversely, why do some individuals not play, even in suitable
conditions?
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128 Pulling the threads together

9. What are the genetic and environmental influences on play and

playfulness?
10. What are the genetic and environmental influences on
creativity?
11. Why are some species more playful than other, closely related,
species? How do these differences relate to the functions of play?
12. Are the most playful lineages of animals the ones that have
evolved most rapidly?
13. What is the optimal mix of creative and innovative individuals in
an organisation, society or species?
14. What are the optimal environmental conditions for creativity in
humans?
15. What interventions are most effective in enhancing creativity in
children, and how long-lasting are those improvements?
16. What are the links between childhood play and adult creativity?
17. How, and under what circumstances, does humour contribute to
creativity?
18. How does humour relate to playfulness? Are the underlying
mood states the same or similar?
19. How, and under what circumstances, does dreaming contribute
to creativity? Can the contribution be enhanced?
20. How, and under what circumstances, do other altered states of
consciousness, including those induced by alcohol and other
psychoactive drugs, affect creativity, both in the short and long
term?

Biology, psychology and the social sciences come together

when exploring the links between play, playfulness, creativity
and innovation. Individuals undoubtedly differ in both their
playfulness and creativity, but such characteristics are not
immutable. People can be helped to become more creative.
However, creativity may be antithetical to the analytical intelli-
gence required for innovation. Can people be helped to become
more creative and more innovative? Insights from developmen-
tal psychology may provide answers, in that an individuals
receptiveness to different types of training and advice change
over the long period of development. Even if aptitudes for
creativity and innovation are to some extent in conflict, people
with different skills can complement each other in teams, as
any successful organisation will show.
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Suggestions for future research 129

Facilitating playfulness through social interactions and

relieving individuals of undue pressure can be important in
fostering creativity. For the individual, the experiences gath-
ered during play may not be useful immediately  although
some may. Much novel behaviour and many ideas may be
worthless, but some may be of great significance later on
when the individual is faced with a challenge. The same ideas
apply to organisations. The success of organisations relies to
varying degrees on their ability to keep innovating. This ability
might in future depend on how much they permit or encourage
their employees to play and be playful. But, irrespective of its
material benefits, the sheer fun of play provides its own
satisfaction.
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Notes

1. In the 1970s, two collections of psychological and sociological essays about

play were published (Bruner, Jolly & Sylva, 1976; Herron & Sutton-Smith,
1971). Although some of the essays set out new ideas and results, these
collections were primarily reprints of earlier articles or expressions of
views that were already available. Other collections of original essays have
been published more recently, notably those edited by Bornstein & OReilly
(1993), Pellegrini (1996), Bekoff & Byers (1998)), Pellegrini & Smith (2005) and
Pellegrini (2011).
2. The developmental psychologist, Thomas Power (2000) in Play and
Exploration in Children and Animals brought together animal and human
literature on play. This book was important because it introduced many
child psychologists to the extensive work on animals, which they had
largely ignored previously. Gordon Burghardts (2005) The Genesis of Animal
Play defined play from his standpoint as a biologist. His definition is
described in Chapter 2. With great originality he explored ideas about the
evolution of play and made a case for its behavioural precursors occurring
in reptiles, amphibia, fish and some invertebrates. Sergio and Vivien Pellis
(2009), in The Playful Brain, described work on the neurobiology of play
largely from studies of rats. They viewed play as the last frontier for the
neurosciences. The educational psychologist, Anthony Pellegrini (2011), in
The Role of Play in Human Development, provided an excellent review of a
theoretical and empirical literature, to which he has made important con-
tributions. He shows how opportunities for play in all its manifestations can
be important for the subsequent mental and physical health of children.
Finally, another major contributor to the play literature, Peter Smith (2010),
offered his wise perspective on the role of play in child development in his
book Children and Play. He adopts a middle way between the enthusiasts for
play and those who are sceptical about its benefits.
3. Burghardts criteria are as follows:

1. The performance of the behaviour is not fully functional in the form or

context in which it is expressed; that is, it includes elements, or is
directed toward stimuli, that do not contribute to current survival.
2. The behaviour is spontaneous, voluntary, intentional, pleasurable,
rewarding and done for its own sake.

130
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Notes 131

3. The behaviour differs from the serious behaviour typical of the

animals species structurally or temporally in at least one respect: it
is incomplete, exaggerated, awkward, or precocious; or it involves
behaviour patterns with modified form, sequencing or targeting.
4. The behaviour is performed repeatedly in a similar but not rigidly
stereotyped form during at least a portion of the animals
development.
5. The behaviour is initiated when an animal is adequately fed, healthy
and free from stress. The animal is in a relaxed state.

4. Examples of playful interactions between different species can easily be

found on YouTube. For instance, search for Deer and dog playing.
5. John Fentress has described play in adult wolves (personal communication),
Marc Bekoff in coyotes (personal communication), and one of us has
observed play in adult Cape hunting dogs.
6. Burghardt (2005) has written interestingly about these motivational issues
and has highlighted areas where new research is needed.
7. In his book, Power (2000) did not distinguish between questions about bio-
logical function and questions about evolution. Burghardt (2005) did, and
our discussions complement what he wrote.
8. A number of other examples of animal innovation were collected in an
attractive book edited by Simon Reader and Kevin Laland (2003a).
9. The logic has been examined in computer simulations. The models of Robert
Fagen (1981) involved a single genetic locus with two alternative forms, or
alleles, determining the presence or absence of the ability to invent through
play new behavioural acts or skills. In one model, no cultural dissemination of
the innovative act occurred. In a second model, invented behaviour patterns
were transmitted transgenerationally from parent to offspring and intrage-
nerationally from performer to peer. The frequency of the play allele variant
increased when the variant was rare. As the discovery spread in the popula-
tion, playful animals lost their relative advantage because they retained the
cost of playing but no longer enjoyed sole possession of the benefits because
others could copy them. The frequency of the play allele continued to drop
until a new type of discovery was made. Fagen concluded that a play allele
would become frequent only if discoveries were frequent, most discoveries
were significantly beneficial, and copying by others was sufficiently selective
or delayed that benefits would not accrue too rapidly to unrelated, non-
playing members of the species. Like all such models, the conclusion depends
on the starting assumptions. If play evolved for other reasons, such as practis-
ing complex adult behaviour, then the conditions for the evolution of play
through its impact on creativity would be less stringent. Furthermore, some
individuals might be able to generate creative solutions at greater speed and
lower cost than others, with the consequence that they would have a differ-
ential advantage in terms of survival and reproductive success.
10. Correlational analyses could use the various play and life-history features of
individual species as data points, correcting for the statistical interdepend-
ence among closely related species. The link between inventiveness and
relative brain size in birds and primates described earlier in the chapter
suggests that such an approach would be profitable.
11. Burghardt and his colleagues plan an expanding publicly available database
that will include information on habitat, social organisation, diet, body size
and brain metrics as well as the incidence of different types of play.
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132 Notes

12. Spaldings article is also historically important because it provided the first
clear account of behavioural imprinting with which Konrad Lorenz (1935) is
typically associated.
13. Baldwin (1902) continued to develop his thinking and the conjecture
became known as the Baldwin effect. Given Spaldings (1873) precedence
and the simultaneous appearance in 1896 of Baldwins ideas about organic
selection, it seems inappropriate to term the evolutionary process the
Baldwin effect. The trouble is that calling the proposed process the
Spalding effect (or the Baldwin effect) is not descriptive of what initiates
the hypothetical evolutionary process. It therefore seems more appropriate
to employ a term that captures the adaptability of the organism in the
evolutionary process and, to this end, the term adaptability driver is used
in this book.
14. A meta-analysis combines the results from a large number of published
studies. Such studies can suffer from bias, since negative findings are not
usually published. Nevertheless, they are generally regarded as providing a
good overview of a given field when no cherry-picking of the studies driven
by a particular agenda is suspected.
15. Poets and visual artists did not share the same inability to experience
pleasure or lack of drive that characterised the psychiatric patients. This
difference might have been due to the drugs taken by the patients.
16. The genes coded for catechol-O-methyltransferase, tryptophan hydroxylase,
dopamine transporter and dopamine receptor.
17. With its buccal cavity full, the whale closes its mouth and forces all the
water out by straining it through the baleen that hangs from the palate. This
keeps all the food inside while getting rid of the water. At this point, the
whales can swallow their food.
18. In most of the animal literature concerned with the emergence of novel
patterns of behaviour, no distinction is drawn between creativity and
innovation. Indeed, creativity is rarely mentioned. Reader and Laland
(2003b) defined innovation as a process that results in new or modified
learned behaviour and introduces novel behavioural variants into a pop-
ulations repertoire. In seeking to refine this definition Ramsey, Bastian
and van Schaik (2007) distinguished process and product. The processes
on which they focused occurred in individuals and were different from
those mechanisms involved in social learning and environmental induc-
tion. We think that Ramsey et al.s process is similar to what we call
creativity. They quote the evidence that of 606 cases of individual innova-
tion in non-human primates, only 16% had spread to at least one other
individual (Laland & Hoppitt, 2003; Reader & Laland, 2002). Even if the
creative acts of some individuals were implemented for those individuals
own purposes, in the majority of cases they were not implemented by
others. Implementation by other individuals would be Ramsey et al.s
product and captured by Reader and Lalands definition of innovation.
We accept that measuring creativity as distinct from innovation is diffi-
cult in animals, since the initial stage involving the performance of a
creative act is usually not seen. The exceptions are the novel bubble-
blowing behaviour patterns expressed by dolphins, the introduction of
new syllables into birdsong, and the addition of novel items into the
bowers of male bowerbirds.
19. The birth order effect was not true for girls, but girls were likely to be more
playful if their mothers were younger.
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Notes 133

20. Another group process used by many organisations for generating ideas or
valuable material is crowd sourcing. An organisation proposes a task to a
heterogeneous group of individuals of varying knowledge and number,
often via the internet (although an early example was material generated
for the Oxford English Dictionary). Responding is voluntary. Those who
respond may sometimes be paid but they often participate for intrinsic
rewards or for social recognition. The organisation that initiates the process
aims to benefit from the quality of the material that is generated.
21. Much of this research is summarised in Fagerberg, Mowery and Nelson
(2005).
22. The role of play in education has engaged numerous writers from a variety
of backgrounds over many years. Two prominent developmental psycholo-
gists wrote powerfully about the importance of play. Lev Vygotsky (1967)
believed that literacy and imagination derived from the actions involved in
play. Jean Piaget also argued that play was important in the development of
the childs imagination (Piaget, 1962). In recent years, the literature has
expanded rapidly and thinking has been greatly helped by the publication
of two important books (Pellegrini, 2009; Smith, 2010) and by huge improve-
ments in methodology (Lillard et al., 2012).
23. Each playful child was matched with a less playful child who was of the
same intelligence, sex, age and race and had the same teacher.
24. The effects of the intervention in Garaigordobils work were similar in boys
and girls, despite big differences in the way that boys and girls play, as found
in numerous studies (see Pellegrini, 2009; Power, 2000). As always in such
research, a distinction must be drawn between structured play activities in
the school environment and free play away from school, where the benefits
might be quite different.
25. In commenting on this study, one reader of our draft manuscript believed
that the children were not playing during the interventions. Another felt
that the children were merely being trained for tests given at the end of the
year-long intervention. Although their criticisms may have some substance,
we feel that some of the games given to the children involved considerable
playfulness on their part and some of the tests, such as painting, involved
considerable creativity.
26. This joke and others can be found at <www.laughlab.co.uk>. Many other
jokes are quoted by Hurley, Dennett and Adams (2011).
27. We suspect that William James meant by drunkenness mildly intoxicated,
not stupifyingly drunk.
28. The French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud made extensive use of
opium and peyote, which contains the psychedelic drug mescaline
(Artaud, 1976). Aldous Huxley used his own experiences with mescaline
when writing The Doors of Perception (1954) and its sequel Heaven and Hell
(1956).
29. Sessa (2008) argued that studies that deliberately or unintentionally disre-
gard these factors and report negative outcomes ought not to be used as
evidence to dispute the positive potential of psychedelic drugs. In general
the research raised important issues to do with the way in which such
studies are designed, such as selection of the subjects and investigating
the interaction between their mind-set and the experiences which they
are about to receive.
30. The interaction between expectation and intake of a substance means that
the conventional double-blind experimental design, in which both
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134 Notes

experimenter and subject are unaware of whether the drug or a placebo has
been administered, can produce misleading results.
31. Given the potential for misunderstanding, it is perhaps necessary for us to
confirm that we are not advocating the excessive consumption of alcohol or
the use of illegal drugs to boost creativity.
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Index

adaptability, 56 empirical ambiguity, 3435

adaptability driver hypothesis, 5354 evidence for biological benefits, 34
Baldwin effect, 51 hypotheses in young animal, 2829
Aesops fabled crow and real rooks, identification approach, 38
6970 knowledge and resilience
agreeableness, 62 acquisition, 3233
alcohol, 115116 negative evidence, 3637
and creativity, 117 play features, 31
creative people using, 116 playful engagement with
creativity experiment with, 116 environment, 33
effects on health, 116 pre-adult mortality, 3839
Alternate Uses Task, 55 predatory behaviour development, 40
alternative tactics, 3941 questions about organism feature,
animals finding novel solutions, 6970 2829
developmental studies of tool use, 74 risks to wild-living animals, 35
discovering process, 7576 self-handicapping, 32
dolphins behavioural patterns, studying harming effects, 36
7274 theories about, 30
humpback whales behaviour, 74 brainstorming, 8182
individuals generalisation from Burghardt, Gordon, 12
experience, 7475 analysis with social play, 49
novel behaviour patterns, 7071 factors for play evolution, 42
novel use of tools, 7172 play benefits, 44
research with chimpanzees, 70 possibility of play in taxonomic
tactical deception behaviour, 71 groups, 16

bad play, 1516, See social play Caro, Tim

behaviour critical analysis effect, 3435
player, 12 documenting risks to cheetah cubs, 35
play-like, 16 examining evidence for play
sensitivity, 12 benefits, 34
social forms of, 12 review about animal play, 34
stick-carrying, 14 social play analysis, 18
tactical deception, 71 cheetah
Big Five personality traits, 62 predation threat from, 29
biological functions of play Tim Caros analysis in, 18
active engagement with childhood play, 89
environment, 31 alternative ways of development,
character of play in animals, 30 100102
consequences of animals play and creativity, 9293
experience, 3738 childrens security, concerns, 9899

150
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Index 151

concerns about lack of, 98 tools for theory analysis, 4546

constraints in schools, 99100 tools used in birds and mammals,
declining effects, 100 4748
effects on problem-solving, 9495 evolutionary developmental biology
losses in, 124125 movement, 50
meta-analysis, 95 extraversion, 62
studying casuality, 9192
conscientiousness, 62 Fagen, Robert, 8, 10, 30, 33
creative dreaming, 112113 Fagens approach, 8
creativity, 34, 44, 45 Feynman, Richard, 58
drug effects on, 119120 Fleming, Alexander, 58
playful thought and behaviour, 124 flexibility, 56
psychological experiences of flow, 61
humans, 120 fluency, 56
role of play in, 48
Crick, Francis, 59 Geim, Andre, 59, 60
generalisation and insight, 7475
Darwin, Charles, 49, 103 genetic algorithm, 68
Darwinian evolutionary theory, 49 global optimum, 4
and Modenn Synthesis, 50 Goodall, Jane, 70, 71
evolutionary changes, 50 graphene, 59
Lloyd Morgans perspective, 5152 Guilfords distinction between
Spaldings mechanism on, 5051 convergers and divergers, 55
daydreaming, 114
and creativity, 114 Health, Environments, Research and
brain function during, 115 Design (HERD), 84
Delbruck, Max, 58 human creativity, 55, See also innovation
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), 59 and personality, 63
developmental scaffolding, 33 and playfulness, 5760
disinhibition, 126 brainstorming, 8182
diverging and converging components of, 5556
thinking, 55 diversity of participants, 81
dolphins, 17 effect of mood, 7980
dreaming, 110 empirical research, 8384
dreams, 110111, 126127 enhancement, 7879
benefits of, 111 gene effect in, 64
creative dreaming, 112113 Guilfords distinction, 55
creative solutions, 111112 importance of mood, 6062
hypnagogic, 113 in groups, 8081
lucid dreaming, 113114 measurement requirement, 5657
organisation features, 8283
enhancing opportunities for play, play and playfulness, role in, 8485
36, 93 psychiatric disorders, 63
equifinality, 34, 94 range and variety of contacts, 79
Escher, M.C., 57 Remote Associates Test, 56
evodevo. See evolutionary Semmelweiss observations, 66
developmental biology movement working condition effect, 83
evolution human laughter
behaviour patterns, 52 effects, 106
chain of events, 53 functions, 107
impact of play on, 49 stereotypical vocal patterns, 106
evolution of play humour, 126
benefits in, 4344 and laughter, 106107
brain functionality, 4647 and playfulness, 108109
evolutionary origins, 46 and well-being, 107108
factors about, 42 as signal, 107
role in creativity and innovation, 48 features of, 104
testing evolutionary theories, 45 generating things, 105106
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152 Index

humour (cont.) motivation to play, 20

jokes, 104105 external rewards, 2021
play and, 103 motivational system changes, 21
hypnagogic dreams, 113 primary and secondary
reinforcers, 21
incongruity, 105 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 57
individual creativity
creative process stages, 7778 Nettle, Daniel, 62, 63
environmental and epigenetic neural correlates of play, 2527
factors influence, 78 neuroticism, 62
individual differences in behaviour, neurotransmitter systems, 25
21, 25, See also behaviour Novoselov, Konstantin, 59, 60
environmental effects, 23
genetic differences in playfulness, 22 openness, 62
in mammals, 2223 opium, 117118
responses to environmental originality, 56, 64
conditions, 2325
sex differences, 23 personality, 78
individuals, 64 Piaget, Jean, 7, 133
Big Five personality traits, 62 Picasso, Pablo, 57
diverging and converging, 55 placebo effects, 120, 134
experiencing flow, 61 plasticity, 53
psychoticism, 6263 play, 1, 122
innovation, 34, 85, 124 across animal kingdom, 16
academic study of, 8788 applied to animal behaviour, 1011
and creative ideas, 65 applied to thoughts, 5
innovators, 87 benefits for young animals, 4445
investigating commercial ideas, biological costs, 34, 35, 123
6566, 67 effect in animal survival, 39
playful creativity, 86 evidence for biological benefits, 34
role of play in, 48 experience, 6
Semmelweiss observations, 66 features of, 1113, 122
successfulness, 86 for creativity and innovation, 45
winnowing of ideas, 6768, 86 functions of, 123
intrinsic motivation, 61 global optimum, 4
historical overview, 68
James, William, 67, 117 in biological literature, 10
Johnson, Steven, 65, 66, 80 in brown bears, 38
jokes, 104105 in cats, 17, 18
in dolphins, 17
Kahneman, Daniel, 60 in humans, 1314
Koestler, Arthur, 105, 110 in mammals, 1617
Kçhler, Wolfgang, 70 in rats, 19, 24, 25, 37, 106
local optimum, 4
learning, 52 neural activity in brain for, 2527
ecological niches, 53 occurrence in life cycle, 1819
from playfulness, 9596 protected context, 2, 5
sensitive period for, 96 relationship with ecological
local optimum, 4 conditions, 4849
LSD, 118119 role in human creativity, 8485
lucid dreaming, 113114 scepticism, 11
sensitivity, 1920, 39
meercat, 36 play behaviour, 130
mescaline, 117, 119 play face, 18, 122
Modern Synthesis, 50 playful creativity, 86
mood playful play, 2, 13, 57
effect on human creativity, 7980 importance in creativity, 3
importance in creativity, 6062 playfulness, 13
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Index 153

playfulness, 1, 2, 13 self-handicapping, 32
and creativity, 90 sensitive period. See also childhood play
and education, 9596 for learning, 96
and human creativity, 5760, 8485 Moyles recommendations, 97
and humour, 108109 POST report, 97
behavioural differences in Smith, Peter, 89
mammals, 2223 social play, 1718, 59
genetic differences in, 22 in cats, 17
in humans, 6 occurrence in life cycle, 18
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), 118 patterns of serious behaviour, 18
positive mood, 61, 80 self-handicapping, 32
Power, Thomas, 130 Spalding, Douglas, 5051
pretend play, 14, 93 surplus energy hypothesis, 4243
behaviour, 14 Suslovs theory, 105
long-term changes in, 94
negative thing in, 15 tactical deception, 71
of older children, 14 Tinbergen, Niko, 28
psychoactive drugs. See also creativity tool use
alcohol, 115116 in Galapagos woodpecker finch, 51
LSD, 118119 in New Caledonian crow, 71
opium, 117118 in non-human species, 109
psychoticism, 6263 Torrance Test, 100
Torrance, Paul, 55
Ramachandrans theory, 109 Tversky, Amos, 60
reinforcers, primary and secondary, 21
Remote Associates Test, 56, 108 UK Parliamentary Office of Science and
resilience, 32, 80, 96 Technology (POST), 96, 97
rough-and-tumble play, 13
Vygotsky, Lev, 7
scaffolding analogy, 33
scepticism, 11 Watson, Jim, 59
schizotypy, 62 weaning and play, 23, 24, 25, 40
seal, Southern fur, 35 well-being, 19, 107108
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